


The Sphinx of Castle B'Net

by karakael



Category: GaoGaiGar, Pathfinder (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:08:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 31,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27373963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karakael/pseuds/karakael
Summary: When the rogue warrior Soldato J is summoned to the highest wizards' university in the land, he is expecting a simple job. Instead, he and his bonded griffin Tomoro end up on the trail of a mystery that stretches to the far reaches of the country...and might even affect the bitter war he has been barred from joining.Unfortunately, all the clues are locked up inside a mad castle and its enigmatic guardian...The Sphinx of Castle B'Net
Kudos: 1





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! This fic is heavily inspired by the Pathfinder RPG, mostly because my group has been on hiatus for TOO LONG. However, I've fudged the world quite a bit to fit the setting. Some quick terms:
> 
> Stryx: Winged humanoids. They are often coded as indigenous, but I haven't really used that here. In this fic they are mostly nomadic herders from the north. Generally distrustful of outsiders and deeply community oriented. 
> 
> Sarenrae: The Goddess of the Sun and Redemption. She has both aspects of forgiveness and vengeance: i.e. great healers but don't get them mad.
> 
> Paladin: Warriors pledged to a certain God, who then provides them superpowers.

“The Archmage will see you now.”

The attendant looked down their nose at this latest adventurer. Their eyes said everything: _clearly the boss must be scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one._

Soldato J, comfortable in ignobility, ignored the sneer, and the more general stares as he followed the attendant through the castle, making sure to keep his wings well out of the way of any curious hands. This is why he preferred to keep far away from ‘civilization’ : These humans claimed superiority over ‘savages’ like his people, but then acted as if anything new was either a threat or worthless.

He had thought perhaps a mages' college might be different, but as usual, civilization disappointed.

So he ignored students and servants alike and strode beside the attendant through the wide halls until they reached the archmage’s chambers. 

The attendant knocked politely and stood aside when a gruff voice called out “enter.”

The office was exactly what J expected: intricate masonry that looked grown rather than set, opulent tapestries on two of the walls, an impossible amount of glass on the other two, bookshelves on any remaining wall space, while the floor was filled with half a dozen tables with various experiments bubbling away while glowing, wispy elementals watched over.

In the midst of all of it, the archmage looked tiny. His heavy desk dwarfed him and his robes seemed to swallow him whole.

“Thank you, Harold.” The attendant bowed and left.

The archmage watched as he left, and sighed after the doors closed.

“It's so hard to get good help these days.”

J did not even glance back. “A war will do that.”

“Mmm. Indeed.” The archmage looked him over, simple curiosity rather than disdain in his eyes. “You’re a Strix, correct? I'm surprised you’re so far from your people...or the front.”

“We have better things to do than fight in another of your foolish wars.”

The archmage’s eyes widened slightly. “Ah. Well, I can’t fault you there. We’ve lost plenty of our brightest to the front lines as well.”

J chose not to respond. The man was hardly worthy of J’s story, and he was equally disinterested in humans complaining about their own errors.

“You’ll be wondering why you’ve been called here.”

“Presumably, you have a job.”

Another sigh. “Yes.”

“And with most of your adventurers hired by the army, you’re looking for whoever you can find for it. Even creatures like me.”

The mage chuckled. “Well, you’ve certainly got a good head on you. Better than the last few I’ve sent out, hopefully.”

He waved J over to a map. 

“You know that there are a half-dozen colleges across the kingdom, yes? And another two dozen or so mages capable enough to take on their own apprentices?” 

J nodded. “Yes. Some of our young people have trained at such places.” 

The archmage looked surprised. “Really? I would have liked to have met them. That’s the problem with being stuck so close to the capital: so few non-humans are interested in traveling far from their homelands, even if we provide the best education.”

J bit his tongue on that. If the reactions of the other students were any indication, far more than the distance was keeping non-humans out of the capital.

“Nevermind that. I’ve called you here because we’ve lost contact with one of our Southern Mages.” He tapped a finger on the map, and a small castle grew out of the parchment, right at the edge of the wide desert that made up the kingdom’s southernmost border. “Gimlet has never been the best at communication, but there’s been no word for six months now. As one of the premier battle mages, his potions are in high demand on the front. Without him, the war will take far longer, and there will be more casualties.”

“You suspect foul play?”

The mage looked away, and J sensed a half truth when he responded with a simple ‘Yes.’

“But that's not the only reason I've called you.” The man placed a picture on the map, showing a class of students surrounding the archmage. He pointed to one girl, standing beside him in the print. “This is Renais. She’s been at the school for years, and became an official ward when her mother died a few years back - as such, she’s my responsibility.”

“And Gimlet has her?”

“Her talent lay in sorcery, not wizardry. Apprenticing her to Gimlet should have helped her develop her skills greatly. Certainly there’s been no hint of her normal rebellious nature since she was sent there. But... If anything bad has happened to her, I must rectify it as soon as possible. I knew her mother well, and she has become something of a second daughter to me.”

The man paused, then sunk into a bow, debasing himself far further than any human J had ever met.

“Please! Go to castle B’net and find out what has happened. Bring back any news of my protégé!”


	2. A Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> J and Tomoro set out to the castle, but run into some trouble on the way.

He took the job. Of course he would. His honor would not allow him to do otherwise. Despite his human tendencies this ‘Liger’ clearly cared deeply about the girl, and J was certain if not for the war and his responsibilities Liger would have been part of the first adventuring party.

As it was, the money was good, and the challenge intriguing.

A different attendant collected him from the archmage’s rooms and lead him back to the entrance. This one seemed only a bit less sneering than the last.

“You are aware that you are the fifth adventurer the Archmage has commissioned?”

J nodded as he adjusted the saddle on his mount.

“None of the rest have returned. Nor has there been any word from them.”

It was lucky his helm hid the roll of his eyes. “If you are trying to scare me, it won't work.”

The blond man shook his head. “You misunderstand. This quest is _dangerous_. And Liger had worried himself half to the grave over the silence. If you wish to flee, please tell us now, rather than forcing the poor man to live through another month of torture.”

J glanced at the man, surprised at his passion and loyalty. A human almost worthy of respect.

“A Soldato does not fear danger. I will not run. I will do everything in my power to see this quest to its conclusion.”

The attendant looked surprised, then grateful. “That is all we can ask. Thank you.” And, just like his master, he bowed low as J mounted up and left, heading towards the southern lands, and the mystery they held.

\-------------

Castle B’net was two weeks long riding from the capital, the first leg of the journey on crowded roads with frequent army checkpoints. 

It took J five days.

It should have been even longer, given his looks and the weapons in his bags. Just getting out of the town surrounding the college involved a near arrest and being dragged to the local station and waiting while his paperwork was meticulously examined.

Luckily, the glamours held, and the officers saw only what they expected to see : a mangy Strix adventurer with equally worthless equipment not worth stealing, exactly as the mage college had said, and exactly what they had seen on his way in.

Privately, J wondered if any of the other adventurers had met their end here, whether because of a checkered past or weapons that looked fancy enough to be ‘requisitioned’ by the army. 

It was with great pleasure, and a whispered command to his mount, that he saddled up just outside the gates and dropped all the glamour at once.

Tomoro reared up, pathetic disguise unraveling like so much spider-silk, red and white wings snapping out, armor catching the afternoon sun, dazzling all who saw it. The massive griffin cried out, once, and took flight, silhouetted by the sun, such a powerful symbol of hope that all who watched felt tired spirits lift - if just for a moment.

The act worked it's magic on J as well, and for an instant he was back on the battlefield, leading his army against a legion of demons, worthy mount beneath him, friends behind, and victory so close as to be tasted.

But he wasn’t paladin any more, and they had lost that long ago battle, so reality reasserted itself by the time the city was out of sight, Tomoro’s heavy wingbeats eating up the distance in easy moments.

“Did I look good?”

The voice in his mind brought him out of his melancholy thoughts, and he patted his steed on the shoulder.

“Aye. Those rubes will be speaking of you for years to come.”

“How quick they forget. I'm glad we could remind them!” The griffin spoke with obvious satisfaction, and J couldn't help but smile. The bird, at least, could preen before the crowd with no guilt. Then again, he’d been a mere chick when the majority of his brethren had moved beyond.

“So where are we going? Will there be fighting? Or food?” For a half magical creature, Tomoro loved every aspect of physical life, far more than J himself did.

“We go south. To a castle on the edge of the desert.”

The griffin grumbled. “I hate the desert. The sand gets in my feathers.”

“We’re off to rescue a girl.”

Tomoro’s crest perked up. “A princess? Finally, a Quest worthy of us!”

J wrinkled his nose at the thought.

“No, thank goodness. She’s just a Sorceress.” 

Tomoro crowed. “Even better! She might be able to keep up with you, then!”

\------------------------ 

The Wizard Liger had given J all the most recent information he’d had on castle B’Net and the surrounding areas, along with the instructions on how to navigate through the castle’s defensive magics.

His information hadn’t included a recent picture of the missing girl, or of any of the other B’Net apprentices. But the magical map that pointed the way included enough detail that J and Tomoro were easily able to navigate over the whole of the kingdom. A simple spell allowed them to fly at night, avoiding detection by the suspicious populace. No spells were needed to hide in the forest during the days; no northerner worth his salt could be found once ensconced in their native home. Two weeks condensed into five nights of flight, skipping from forest to forest, invisible to both soldiers and mages alike.

They reached the border with only a few minor incidents, all of which J easily dealt with. Five years later, eight towns would remember the soldier in green who appeared from nowhere and slaughtered rampaging monsters before the guards could even be called, only to disappear back into the night without word. J didn’t even commit the names to memory, only noting the spread of the war rot so deep into the country. Bad news for the front, but not his concern.

What was a concern was the moment the map went wrong.

They had slowed their approach as they got close to their destination, J preferring to find the nearest town and do recognizance once they had the place in sight.

Tomoro glided, J directing, when suddenly the scrubby forest below them ran out.

No warning, just a single moment of waning trees, then complete emptiness.

Tomoro squawked and nearly tumbled from the sky at the sudden change of wind currents. A moment later the map in J’s hand exploded, catching fire so fast that he only had enough time to confirm that there should have been another 20 minutes of forest before it went up in smoke.

Both swore, and by unspoken agreement Tomoro wheeled and found the nearest clearing and landed just outside the desert's reach.

J dusted off the remains of magic and dug out his normal maps. They confirmed what was obvious : the desert was larger than it should be.

“Were there any towns in there?” Tomoro’s voice was grim.

J shook his head and Tomoro relaxed.

“The nearest one should be directly west.” he paused. “The forest feels...distressed.”

Tomoro cocked his head, concentrating to feel what J could instinctively. “If by ‘distressed’ you mean hurt and angry as hell, yeah. Can't blame it, either.”

J nodded, curtly. He was familiar with angered nature - any forest forced to house the undead would rebel - but this felt different, as if the desert had expanded suddenly, without warning, shocking the forest as much as it shocked them.

“I'm going into the town.” he said, standing suddenly.

Tomoro was used to such quick decisions. He moved to stand as well, but j motioned him down.

“No. I need you to watch the desert.”

“Why?”

“See how much it grows.”


	3. The Town

J found little information in the town, but was surprised to find himself welcomed, despite his unusual form. The tiny village had served the castle for centuries, long before Gimlet had taken over, and the sudden loss worried them deeply. At the same time, dealing with mages had made them more open to those odd in form and function, seen by the various non-humans dotted through the place, the only one standing out at all was a very out of place water nymph who worked at the bar.

Her wide blue eyes watched J as he entered the bar, the fear clear to see, even as the barkeep welcomed him with hope.

“We don’t see many Strix ‘round here. Please tell me you’re an adventurer?” The matronly woman asked, a bowl of hearty soup already in her hands, and a flagon of beer quick to follow.

J accepted the offering, still shocked at her openness.

“...yes. I was sent by the mage’s college.”

“Oh thank the Goddess!” There were sighs of relief from round the room, as every villager within earshot relaxed; even those more typically ‘welcoming’ removing hands from weapons and coming closer.

“We saw another one of you chaps head off into the desert a month ago. He never came back.” A gruff man with a barrel chest said. “I hope you have more luck. The desert has near swallowed up my farm.” 

“My fields are gone too!” 

“The river’s run dry! All our fields will go eventually, even the ones far from the desert.”

“Please, tell us what’s happening!”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you.” J said, and the room quieted at the tone of his voice. He looked at each of the patrons in turn, and the waitstaff as well, including the skittish nymph.

Finally the Matron said.

“I suppose that means that Warlock never made a report to your employer. At least, not before the desert ate him.” She sighed and sat down, and the other patrons shuffled away when she shooed her hands at them.

“You understand that the castle has always been...strange. If there were any signs that something was wrong, we didn’t notice them. Plenty of strange creatures and odd happenings - that’s why the village is so far away. Things go wrong, and no one wants to have eight eyes while the mages figure out how to fix it.

“But six months ago, suddenly everything went silent. No people coming in for supplies. No messenger birds on the horizon.

“And no one came home. Plenty of kids risk the odd magic for the good pay, but not a one returned for their off day. 

“Not long after that, the desert appeared. Just about when we sent someone to go investigate, the sand came, eating up the road and everything within a mile of the castle.

“And now its growing, and no one has the courage to go in. Not after the first group had to be pulled out, half dead and sand-mad.

“You must understand, we’re used to what the empty lands do to people. There is real desert south of here, out past the grasslands. But this...this is something different. The sands have always been dangerous, but they’ve never eaten a castle whole.

“Something is terribly, terribly wrong. Please, ask your employer to help us, however they can.”

J took this all in, and quickly came to a decision.

He withdrew the message scroll from his bag. Supposedly, he was to send back updates on every step of his progress.

Thus far, he had simply reported how many monsters had appeared on his journey, where, and when he dispatched them. Now he handed the scroll over to the barkeep.

“This scroll relays information directly to the Mages’ College. Write down everything you’ve just told me, and send it to them.”

The barkeep’s expression fell. “Ah...well…”

“I can help with the strange words.” The nymph finally spoke up, her hand pressed to the older woman’s shoulder. J realized there was a strong resemblance between the two, despite the completely different species. 

The matron might not be telling him everything. But no matter.

“I will go into the desert to investigate. My abilities should protect me somewhat from the madness, even if it is as dire as you say. But I will not enter the castle; thus, if I do not return, you can include in your report that the desert is the danger, not just the castle.”

The barkeep swallowed. “...do you believe you will fail, like the others?”

J stood and paid for his meal with a coin, waving of the Matron's protests.

“A Soldato does not make promises of success in the face of the unknown.”

\------------------

He reconvened with Tomoro a few hours later, having taken a roundabout path back to camp to lose any overly curious villagers or spies. Only when he was certain that no one was watching and the last light had faded from the sky did he take flight and climb back to camp.

Frankly, he was surprised no one appeared to even try. But the villagers had been dispirited, and surely the war had taken its toll even before the castle disappeared.

“I'm not so sure about that.” Tomoro said, as J brought him up to speed on the new information. “I haven't sensed any demons since we got here. Have you?”

J considered, then took a moment to concentrate and push his senses out. 

Tomoro was right. Despite the malignant wrongness of the sands and castle, there were no evil presences anywhere near the town or within several leagues of the strange area. 

“And that's weird, right? We ran into monsters every night on our way here. They're supposed to be drawn to bad stuff, right? The sand sure registers as bad to me…”

“It's a crime against nature.” J agreed. "What should be has been twisted. And that is exactly what gives them so much power...the mindless ones should be thick as flies round here, and their masters close at their heels.”

But there had been no sign of any of that in the town. Their worries had been wholly focused on the castle. Their forms might have been strange, but not a one registered as more than humanly evil. And while his skills as a warrior of light had waned since...well, Since, he could still sense corruption well enough that only a very powerful dark wizard would be able to hide from his other sense. 

“I don't like this.” Tomoro said, ruffling his feathers and resting his beak on his front paws. “even good things feel wrong now.”

J leaned back, resting his head against the tree trunk, and watched the stars for a moment, letting the familiar ache bite at him a moment before turning away. 

“There are two possibilities. The evil they feed on has already been drained from this place…”

“Or?”

“There's something much worse keeping them away.”


	4. The Sphinx

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> J arrives at the castle and meets its guardian. The meeting goes about as well as could be expected with a creature harboring evil within her domain.

Given J's dire warning, Tomoro was not keen to allow J to go into the desert alone. No matter the logic J used - of needing a backup, or a scout on the outside, or even just someone to bring him water - the griffin still argued, until he was forced to order his mount to remain behind. 

Even then, glancing back, he saw Tomoro pacing, back and forth, waiting at the sand’s edge.

J resolved not to look back again. Instead he set the rising sun to his left and strode on into the desert. As he walked he kept his mind sharp, feeling when the misdirection spell took hold, a confusion spell coming not long after, both tied to the shifting sands and strengthening each step he took closer to the castle.

The warlock who came before him likely had simply broken the spells outright, but J chose a different strategy; shunting the spells off to an echo of his mind, a reflection he kept around for just such a purpose.

Well, that and to remind himself never to allow such mind control to affect him again. 

His constructed self fumed and raged at the magic, struggling and failing to break free, and each time J felt a push to change his course he knew he was heading in the right direction.

The misdirection was strongest on the road, which he stumbled upon half an hour after Tomoro had faded from sight. It was hard to see; the cobblestones now completely covered with sand, but his boots rang the instant they struck down. 

The rational part of his mind was happy to take the easier path to the castle, while the enchanted part of him struggled against the doubling of the strength in the enchantment. No wonder the townspeople had fallen; the strength was far more than their untrained minds could handle. Added to the normal mirages and the cruel beating of the sun, it was a wonder they had survived at all.

But the five mile long journey was not difficult for J, just a bit of a mental challenge. He placed himself carefully, making sure to stop frequently for water and to check the sun's position in comparison to his, and as such did not need to back track. He only caught himself nearly stepping from the path once, and he slowed himself further when he realized how his concentration had momentarily slipped.

So it took three hours to walk the flat path to the castle, ignoring mirages and pushing against the magic the whole way, before the true Castle B'Net was before him.

It was an ugly thing, squat and lumpy, made of rough brown sandstone that faded naturally into the surroundings, made for form over function and even that abandoned as the huge stones crumbled and inner towers grew too large to be protected by walls. 

J tried to imagine it surrounded by scrubland and stubby trees, undamaged by whatever calamity had brought about the desert, but couldn’t see it. It looked far more natural as it did now - crumbling and disappearing into the sands, rather than a towering structure trying to pretend to a nobility it had no instinct for. 

Still, the walls were formidable, despite bits being blown off the top, and the only obvious entrance was through the huge double gate with its creaking portcullis hanging open. It seemed rusted in place, but J still approached the first entrance cautiously. 

Wind whistled through abandoned battlements as he walked forward, misdirection blowing away as easily as the sand around him now his goal was within view.

No indication that the desert was anything truly dangerous, then. So what inside had silenced so many adventurers before him?

“You don’t want to go in there.”

He jerked to a stop, a good twenty of his long strides from the first gate, and scanned his surroundings for the source of the voice.

“Up here, Bird-boy.”

He looked up, but still did not see the owner of the voice, until it finally moved.

What he had mistaken for another crumbling lump of parapet shifted, and shook out feathers and fur. But it wasn’t a beak or muzzle that looked down on him, but a human face.

“Another adventurer, right?” 

The sphinx looked as worn down as her surroundings. Her wings were in a terrible state of disrepair, feathers sticking out in a way that made the Strix wince. Her lion-like body was emaciated, ribs showing through raggedy pelt. But there was a mad intelligence in her eyes, and thick muscles beneath her loose skin.

She shifted, coming to rest with her wings folded on her back and her paws folded before her, a parody of elegance in such a mangy creature.

J’s sword was already in his hand, remembering battles with similar creatures during the wars - of corrupted griffins and poisonous manticores, of chimeras and harpies and all manner of creatures twisted into darkness by the Zonder demons. 

But the Sphinx just laughed.

“Put away your sword, I will not attack you.” A wicked glimmer flickered in her eyes. “At least not yet.”

He lowered his sword, but did not sheath it. Monsters were not trustworthy, but such a specimen would not be able to best him in speed, even if it did attack.

As he did so the sphinx flapped her wings again and looked pleased.

J spoke. “Ask your riddle, Sphinx.”

A sneer crossed her face. Despite the mane, a human might find her face attractive, assuming it was possible for her to make an expression other than vague disgust, condescension, or irritation.

“I don’t like riddles. How ‘bout a deal instead?”

J’s brows rose. He had never heard of a Sphinx without riddles. Wasn’t that what their magic was based upon?

“I will hear your deal, but I make no promises to agree to it.” He said, lowering his sword still more.

She shrugged. “The rest have taken me up on it. I would urge you to do so as well.”

“The others?”

Despite being a good twenty feet above him, her eyes and ears were remarkably expressive. He saw her roll her eyes with her whole body.

“The other adventurers. The...oh, three? four? Before you?”

“What did you do to them?”

She waved a paw. “Oh, nothing. I’m sure they’re fine. Except the warlock. He got greedy. The rest were simply smarter.”

He crossed his arms. “Fine. Tell me your deal.”

She sat up, coughed once then said,

“This castle has fallen into darkness. Monsters and ghosts lurk in its hallways. Evil stalks its heart. None who enter have yet escaped.” 

As she spoke, darkness welled behind her and her eyes began to glow with the fires of prophecy. 

They snapped off just as quickly when she then said,

“So I will give you one of the great treasures of this castle if you will go away and stop bothering us.”

“....what.”

She sat back down. “I thought I was very clear. I will pay you to go away.” 

She ducked beneath the parapet for a moment, then came back with a dagger gripped in her mouth. She spoke around it, her words muffled but understandable.

“This, for example. The Dagger of Sacrifice. An ancient weapon of a long-dead cult, the magic of those slain absorbed deep into its iron heart; any of pure will who carry it will be blessed with impossible luck.”

When J did not react, she added.

“It’s worth 50,000 gold coins.” 

That made him start. Such an amount was a hundred times what Liger had offered him. It was more money than his entire clan could boast even if they sold all their magic and griffins at once.

And she had spat it out as if it was nothing.

What was more, he sensed no lie from her. In general, Sphinx had difficulty with lies, but this one had not even made an attempt at subterfuge. The fact was as true as she could make it, and his other-sense felt the pulse of power at her feet that seemed to back up her claim.

“And all you want for this is…”

“For you to turn around and leave.”

He considered. Not if he was going to take the deal - no honorable warrior would ever do such a thing, even if the Divine Falcon himself proved that the Sphinx was speaking nothing but truth - but if she had also spoken truth when she said the other adventurers had taken the deal then, given the Arch Mage’s lack of knowledge, not even informed their original clients of their choice.

His lip curled in disgust. He had little enough honor left that he had no interest in squandering it. But still. Was that the best human adventurers had to offer?

However, his people had learned long ago that those with no honor often took advantage of those with, should they realize the other’s integrity. So he pretended to consider, though to think so made his stomach curl.

“You’ve given out four of these treasures, and still have enough for me? Why shouldn’t I just kill you and take the rest for myself?”

“That’s what the Warlock said. _Think of the treasures that must be inside_ , he said.” The sphinx smiled. “He didn’t make it past the courtyard.”

“Did you kill him?”

Her expression darkened. “I didn’t need to. Leaving really is in your best interest.”

“If I say no, will you let me walk through the door?”

“...yes.”

Again, he sensed no lie from her. A truly odd creature indeed. 

But it didn’t change his mission. A mission he had sworn to complete. As much as he disliked them, the humans did need to discover what had happened to Gimlet and his mages, and all indications pointed to something very, very bad. 

He carefully considered, then said.

“No. I will not take your deal.”

He expected her to attack then. Expected whatever magic she had hidden her true intentions by to unravel along with her mad fury.

Instead, she sighed.

“Suit yourself.” She settled down, stretching. “Some rules, then: Don’t touch anything but the treasure you want and - “

“I am not interested in treasure.”

“Eh?” 

“I was hired to find out what happened to this place and the girl Renais. I will complete my mission, or die trying, as is the Soldato way. Stand aside, beast.”

Surprised, the Sphinx nodded to the doorway. 

“I’m not stopping you. But my point still stands. Don’t touch anything shiny, and don’t attack the monsters.” She turned away, exposing her back and the disgraceful wings once again. “Good luck getting out alive.”

J sneered and walked forward, completely forgetting his earlier promise to report back before he entered the castle.

\---------------------- 

The castle was exactly as he expected. Darkness cloaked everything the moment he passed through the inner gate, making it impossible to judge if he had walked inside or was hidden from the sun by some malevolence. The sand of the desert took on an eerie whiteness, stark against the darkness as it gathered in corners and against walls, but oddly never on the path proper.

He found out why a bare few moments past the first gate. As he hugged the wall, he sensed a presence past the next corner and silenced his steps completely as he snuck closer to observe.

He found a small courtyard - or atrium, it was impossible to tell with the darkness - paved with thick stone completely unmarred by the degradation found outside, looking for all the world as if it had been melted in place. Off to one side was a pale woman, hands moving a broom mechanically back and forth.

J was familiar with ghosts. They were not particularly uncommon in old castles like this one, nor were they always inherently evil. 

But J could see through this one’s innocent exterior. A vicious stench of evil rolled off it, and without a doubt the simple ghost was actually a far more dangerous malevolent entity - a wight or geist at the least. 

Such evil could not be allowed to live. His sword already in his hand, it was but a single rush to where it hid, a charge that caught the creature completely by surprise.

He was proven right, as the frail waif of a girl turned, her face contorting to a hideous maw as she saw him.

He ignored the lashing teeth and struck with his blessed sword, causing it to scream in the first agony it had felt since it’s death. Blessed steel, the last weapon he had left from his time as a paladin, and a weapon he had no right to still wield, but its blow rang true.

He rolled through the frigid cold of the ghost’s form and came up with his back to a wall. No other creatures came at the ghost’s scream, and he had a moment to take stake as the ghost flailed insubstantial hands at her stomach, looking for blood that no longer flowed.

He circled her, placing safety behind him and keeping eyes open for potential friends…

Only to hear a scream of rage behind him, just before a weight slammed onto him from above.

“I TOLD YOU.” The Sphinx roared, her anger coloring her eyes red and spittle flying from her mouth, wiping away all traces of humanity as she struck.

They rolled, end over end, her claws scrabbling on his armor, his sword flung off to the side, both fighting to use weight and reach to their advantage, wings flapping to regain balance.

He struck with a gauntleted fist while she had him pinned to the ground. He heard a rib snap, but she did not stop fighting. Instead, she caught hold of his shoulder and bit down, metal armor creaking under her strong jaws, back feet fighting to keep him to the ground. 

He shifted, ignoring the pain and loss of sensation, and gathered his wings beneath him, his own heels digging into the dirt, knees bent, saving his strength. The Sphinx was focused on his sword arm, beginning to jerk her head, half ready to dislocate his shoulder or more likely, trying to tear his arm right from the socket. She certainly had the strength to do so.

But she didn’t know how to use her wings. She had strength and weight on him, but she would never win in a fair fight. 

And he wasn’t going to let it be a fair fight. Not for a creature that attacked from behind.

He let her have one more moment of victory, then sprung, using his legs and wings together to lever himself from the ground, throwing her off in one smooth motion, balance already regained fast enough that he could tumble to his sword and lash out while she was still trying to right herself.

She screamed as the blade cut a deep trench across her flank and neck, the sound almost human, and she scrambled backwards, uninjured paws stumbling in her pain, as he advanced.

_NO!_

A chill ran up his spine, and that was all the warning he got before he was tossed away, hard enough that he hit the opposite wall and saw stars. No matter; he was on his feet a moment later, sword in hand, holy spell on his lips, ready to blast the ghost-creature away.

Only to find not one. Not two. But _five_ ghosts standing between him and the sphinx. 

The sphinx, whose head was cradled by the first ghost, whimpering in pain, as the creature spat acid on the wound, cauterizing it instantly.

Healing, from a creature that knew nothing but its own hatred. That was...not possible. Not according to every rule of the world he knew. 

But the Sphinx turned her face to that of the ghost, and the evil spirit bent its head down and touched her, brow to brow.

“Silvie…”

The answer was just a wail, aching and pained. It made the other ghosts flicker and their eyes began to glow with a greenish light.

The Sphinx turned from her friend, and looked through immaterial forms until she saw J’s eyes.

There was no hatred there. Just pain, and understanding.

She spoke. The word so quiet that he should not have heard it, but it struck to his soul.

“Run.”

And, in the first good decision he’d made since entering the castle, he did exactly that.


	5. The Naiad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having been beaten back by the monsters of the castle, J goes to find another source of information.

Two hours later, throwing all caution to the wind and using a spell he hadn’t thought he remembered, he crashed into their camp, his endurance lasting him just long enough before his wings gave out.

Tomoro squawked with surprise, and then with horror as he looked at the sorry state his master had become. His face was sunburned and sand-blasted, there was blood in his feathers and bruises riddling his body, claw marks up and down his armor and one arm hung limp, cradled by the other and causing J to wince each time it was jostled. 

Not the worst Tomoro had ever seen him but certainly not the best.

“J! What happened?”

“I got into a fight.”

“In the desert?”

J groaned and sat up. “In the castle.” 

Tomoro moved quickly, and scooted round so that J could lean into his side. One of the griffin’s wings extended protectively around his friend.

“You said you weren’t going to go into the castle.”

J groaned again, then moved as fast as he could to force his shoulder back into the socket. He was too tired to hide the resulting scream.

A few moments of worried silence later, he said, “I didn’t think it would be that dangerous.”

“That danger- J, it’s killed 5 other adventurers!”

He shook his head and started to remove his armor wincing as every piece that hit the ground revealed more bruises. “Only one. The others were - “ he whimpered as his gauntlet came off “ - cowards.”

“And you had to prove yourself better?” Worry was tinged with irritation in Tomoro’s voice, and he nudged a healing potion bottle forward with a bit more force than necessary.

“Nnnno. Just - ergh - shouldn’t have turned my back on her.”

“Her?”

The potion burned going down, but not as much as the image of a fiend hunching over and its victim relaxing in its grasp. 

“Her. It. The sphinx at the gate. She attacked me when my back was turned.”

Tomoro riffled through his saddle bags and pulled out salve for bruises and scrapes, and a canteen of sanctified water. Both he nudged towards J. If his master was able to grumble, rather than turn into a silent killing machine, then things were not as bad as they first appeared.

“That doesn’t sound like any sphinx I know.”

“She wasn’t a normal sphinx. Had deals, not riddles.”

Tomoro considered as he poured water into their cook pot for cleaning cloths and bandages. 

“Maybe she’s cross-bred with a harpy.”

“What would it matter?” J didn’t drink from the canteen until Tomoro forced it to his lips with a wing-tip.

“Well, harpies are big on Rules. You didn’t break one of her Rules, did you?”

The resulting silence was all the answer that Tomoro needed. His master still sometimes thought like a soldier; that all problems came down to right and wrong and as long as one knew which was which there were no unnecessary questions. He had been a very, very good Knight, once. But then the war and corruption got in the way, and now he was becoming something else. But he still could be tripped up by a reality that was not good at black and white. 

The griffin sighed. And here he had hoped this would be a nice easy quest with a pretty girl and an evil sorcerer. He should have known nothing was that simple.

He added more water to the pot.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning. Was the desert safe?”

\-------------------------- 

It took two full days of rest before J was recuperated enough to move confidently outside of camp again. And he had no intention of making the same mistakes he’d made the first time.

Of course, his definition of mistakes was perhaps a bit different than Tomoro’s. 

The griffin fretted as J prepared to set out again, wings fluttering in agitation.

“You look terrible. Are you sure - “

It was true. One eye was blackened and his lip was still split. There were healing scrapes along his face, and that was just what one could see on his face. His hands were scratched as well, and he was still favoring one arm. He was in no shape to fight, but he was certainly frightening to look at.

“Looking like a monster will only help.”

Tomoro clucked, worried, “If you say so.”

“I do. It's time to get some real answers.”

\--------------------- 

Rahnia hummed as she worked, hands flying over the dishes, water rippling as it always did now under her fingers. No grease-stain was too tough for her, no scraping to stuck. Each utensil came from the sink cleaner than it had been the day before, years of stains coming off with every careful wash.

“You know something, girl.”

She would have screamed, but for the heavy glove thrust over her mouth. 

It was no surprise when the warrior came into view, tall and intimidating as the first day in the inn, face now distorted into something even more fearful by whatever had befallen him at the castle.

He held no knife, but he didn’t need to. His presence was enough to terrify and she covered her mouth when he removed his hand, his glare enough to keep her silent as he walked to the scullery door, closed and locked it.

Of course, he would have no way of knowing that was all it would take to ensure their privacy. An outsider wouldn’t know what even her family kept quiet; how they would let her run away to her dishes and pots when it all got to much, and wouldn’t disturb her when she locked her door to hide, cry, and shiver from the memories.

He wouldn’t know that, but it reminded her all the same.

When he was certain they were alone, he returned.

“You didn’t tell me the whole truth, did you. There is something more; about the desert, and about the castle.”

Rahnia swallowed, and forced herself to speak.

“Is...is she okay? The Sphinx? You didn’t...kill her, did you?” Her eyes filled with tears at the thought.

At the same time, the warriors mouth dropped.

“You know her?”

\----------------------------------- 

The story came out slowly, haltingly, over two cups of tea that boiled far faster than it should.

“It wasn’t...fast, like they said it was. It just seemed that way from the outside. One minute, everything was fine, the next the desert and the monsters and the chaos.”

“Chaos?”

“She got everyone out. Everyone who could leave. That was me, and the goat-boy Finn, and all the other servants she smuggled away. I still don’t know how she did it, when we were all under so far.”

“What do you mean, under?”

Rahnia turned, and pulled aside her hair, revealing an ugly alchemical tattoo on her back. An even uglier scar ran through it, made with what looked like a burning knife. 

“It was just little stuff at first. They needed a virgin to kiss a rose for their magic. A bit of hair for a doll. Some blood for a spell. And the rewards were so good. Little bits of magic to make the day go better. And the pay was good, so people like me from all the towns round here came. Some even found magic within themselves, and became hedge witches and wizards, helping with the real Work of the castle. But then…”

She trailed off, staring into her cup.

“It went from roses and hair to blood and teeth. And then worse. And you never really thought about how many people were missing things. Arms. Eyes. More. I actually thought it was nice how they made sure to find work for them! And other people were...different. I don’t have anything against people like you! Strix, right? Or those tall people - Elves, they said. But...you started to notice that there were people you didn’t always remember being different. We’ve never had goblins, or fauns, or naiads around here. But these were people I’d known my whole life, different than how I remembered.”

“But by the time I started to think, they came to me and offered a change. A chance to do something amazing. To become something amazing. And everyone did seem happy with what they became. So...I said yes. I was excited. 

“And I never considered there might be something wrong with that. How I was completely content with changing my species. I’m a naiad in a desert, now. I can barely walk outside without going up in steam.”

She laughed, but it was broken and full of tears.

“You’re saying they had you under a compulsion spell.” The Strix said.

She nodded. “Something like that, yes.”

“To do everything they did...that would have had to start years before the desert came.”

Rahnia looked up. “It was like that all the time I worked there. From the very first day, six years ago.”

\----------------------------------- 

J walked the entire way back to camp, each step jogging his bruised shoulder and reminding him of his own idiocy. 

He had known the naiad girl hadn’t been telling him everything. But this...this was larger than he could have imagined.

As best he could calculate, there had been 200 people in the castle, servants and wizards alike. Who knew how many more throughout the years had come and then disappeared without a trace. And if one added necromancy onto the list - a near certainty given the monsters Rahnia had described as being part of her daily life at the castle, knowing each of the five ghost’s he’d seen by name and assigned cleaning space - well, a war gave up plenty of bodies and more corruption that could be turned to twisted purposes.

And within it all, the Sphinx was still a mystery. Rahnia idolized her with as much fervor as the ghost-creature had. She’d been a servant just like the rest of them; living deep in the basements, doing menial chores, her very name stripped away by some arcane magic. In Rahnia’s story, she hadn’t been _changed_ until the very end, but there was no doubt in Rahnia’s mind who she was. 

_She came to us scullery girls. We were awake because there was so little work to do. The ghosts took care of so much. They didn’t even notice when we were gone. But we hadn’t noticed when anyone else disappeared, either._

_She took a hot knife to our backs, and we let her, because it was an order. Didn’t matter who from. And then we ran because she told us to._

No one had come looking for Rahnia. This simply confirmed to J that the servants were merely warm bodies, kept around by coin, used up for the castle’s monstrous experiments then forgotten until they were needed again. 

Rahnia had shaken off most of the magic by the time the next group of runaways had been released, and helped the changed servants move further into the kingdom, as far away from the castle as possible. She hid in the scullery constantly, terrified that the mages from B’Net would find her, but still willing to shelter runaways. Even the ones that B’Net did pursue. 

The little boy who’d become a firebird.

The girl who cried diamonds.

The snake-woman who fled into the desert, taking with her eyes that could turn men to stone. 

Those B’Net searched for, but didn’t find, hidden under Rahnia’s sink, cocooned under magic woven out of terror and fear, first for herself, but widened to fit any one running towards home.

Thirty, maybe forty, people the naiad had helped, in the months leading up to the final moment, when the desert came and the castle died. Rahnia didn't know what happened during those last few weeks, except that there were fewer and fewer escapes, and those that did were changed for the worse, some dying in her arms, all grateful for even a temporary escape.

All signs pointed to one thing. A wizard gone mad. But one clever enough to hide himself, perhaps for decades, even around his peers. J was a fool indeed if he thought a single adventurer could clear that out by himself.

Still. There might be a way through the castle. At least far enough to stop whatever was spreading the desert. 

But to do that…

J groaned, just within sight of his campfire. He was going to have to do something he hated.

He was going to have to apologize.


	6. Chapter 6

The Sphinx of Castle B’Net was not surprised to see the Strix Warrior approaching again, three days after their battle. 

She had guessed he’d come back on the second day. It was nice to be wrong, when it gave her an extra day to recuperate and quiet the ghosts back down.

She was surprised, though, when she saw that he was not carrying his sword. 

In fact, he was not wearing any armor. 

Deeply suspicious, she rolled over from her upside-down position and squinted into the sun-dazzle. Yes, she had seen correctly. He was wearing nothing but a leather jerkin and breaches. Bruises ran up and down his arms, and without his helmet the mess she’d made of his face was clearly obvious.

But more shocking was what was with him.

She sat up so fast the wound on her side screamed.

A monster. He was bringing a white monster with him. And it was following behind him as docile as a lamb. 

Or, maybe not that easily, as she saw it nudge him rather hard right on a bruise, then open its beak in an avian laugh at his discomfort.

A griffin. A monster like her. What was going on?

\------------------- 

Tomoro had been told, very clearly, that he was to act mute before the Sphinx, giving no hint to his true intelligence. He had grumbled at this, never enjoying playing the prop to J’s plans, but he’d promised.

He broke the promise the moment he caught sight of the beast, watching him with open shock from the battlements.

“Your wings!” He squawked, horror dripping from every screech. 

“Eh?”

The Sphinx blinked, not at all surprised by the bird speaking directly into her mind, but very surprised indeed when Tomoro launched himself straight at her, breaking every pretense that he was some docile pet as he ignored J’s shout and took off.

The Sphinx tumbled backwards, wings flapping awkwardly, as Tomoro crashed into the battlements.

“Who taught you to take care of your wings?!! Those are dangerous. You could hurt yourself! Let me fix them!”

The female monster scrambled backwards, a growl in her throat.

“Who are you?” She thought back.

Tomoro paused his tirade. Most everyone could hear him, if he shouted, but few people could answer back silently, mind to mind, in the way he could with J.

Well, maybe not exactly the same as with J, as distance didn’t matter for their bond, as their connection could not be separated except by death itself.

But her voice was direct, clear, and uncluttered by the secondary thoughts and images that so frequently infected the mind-speech of the untrained.

“My apologies for my companion.” J’s voice, from below them, growled in irritation. “He was supposed to behave.”

“Well, you didn’t tell me we had a crisis on our hands!” Tomoro thought back.

The Sphinx snorted. 

“Get back here, bird.”

Tomoro took one last look at the horrific wings, taking note now of the emaciated form and still-healing wounds, then obeyed the order.

He landed in the sand next to his master, and pretended embarrassment to ease J’s feelings. The griffin sat back, wrapping his tail around his legs, and bit his tongue while J tried to do the closest thing to groveling the man could stomach.

“Sphinx. I came here to apologize for my behavior when last we met.”

The Sphinx peaked over the parapet, composure regained, looking unimpressed.

“So you’ve come back for another go? Or do you want your money?”

“Neither. I do mean to apologize. I broke your rule, and hurt your friend. I might not be able to understand why you care so much for the monsters in this castle, but I can respect your dedication. I’ve come to make amends.”

“And why should I believe you?”

“Other than the fact that you can tell when I lie?”

Her tail lashed, and Tomoro bit back another chuckle. 

“Other than that, yes.”

“Well, I was hoping to interest you in a creature like yourself, but unfortunately my companion has also made an ass of himself. But I have brought food and drink, baked by your friend in the village. At the very least, I could give you news of her.”

The Sphinx’s eyes narrowed, and the growl began again. “What did you do to her? If you - “

J quickly held up his hands. “I merely asked her questions. She gave me this specifically to give to you.”

The face disappeared for a moment, presumably as the Sphinx considered his words, then she appeared another moment later at the gateway.

“Fine. But we will speak on my turf. Lets see if you can keep your promises the second time around.”

She jerked her head towards the darkened courtyard, and Tomoro grinned widely at J before following. Things were going well so far!

\----------------- 

The courtyard was just as unsettling the second time around, worse now that J knew evil ghosts slumbered in the stones beneath his feet. 

But he bit his tongue and followed the Sphinx deeper, into a corner he’d not seen that consisted of a low wall abutting the main castle wall. 

As they got closer, it became clear that this was the area the Sphinx slept in. A small mage fire crackled in a broken hearth and half a dozen mattresses had been dragged from their original homes and thrown against the walls and onto the floor. Several were leaking feathers from violent rips, showing that the temper J had seen earlier might not just be confined to hapless adventurers.

She nudged one of the less damaged mattresses down from the wall and pushed it towards them with a paw.

“Sorry for the accommodations. You wouldn’t want to go into the real rooms.”

“Because they’re filled with monsters?” 

“Among other things.” Not elaborating, she flopped onto the other mattress, then reached up for an iron kettle. 

It was odd to see a human face open wide enough to crack, then clamp onto the hard iron with the mouth and lift it directly on the fire. One thing for a creature to do the same, but this...it just looked wrong.

Like everything else in the place, J thought to himself.

But he did not voice his thoughts, and instead opened the sack he carried, revealing fresh bread, cheese, some vegetables and a wrapped side of meat. 

He wasn't quite sure what Sphinx normally ate, but the variety seemed good enough, and Tomoro would be happy to eat anything she left behind.

He hadn’t lied when he told the Sphinx that he’d been given the food. When Rahnia had heard he was going out to meet her - without threats of violence, this time - she had loaded him down with enough food from around her kitchen that he’d needed to pace himself on the walk back to camp for fear of exhausting himself from the weight. 

Half of the food remained there, J not wanting to carry such a heavy pack into the desert, despite Tomoro offering to haul the whole thing.

Maybe it would have been a good idea - the griffin would have had more difficulty launching himself at the Sphinx if the saddlebags had been in the way. 

Still the feast was enough for a group double the size of the small party. 

At least, that was what J thought, until the Sphinx looked at the food and her stomach roared for her.

She flushed bright scarlet.

“Ah - I know technically magical creatures don’t need to eat. I don’t know why - “

“Don’t tell me you haven’t eaten anything since you changed!” Tomoro dove in and ripped a chunk from the side of goat and nearly hurled it across the fire and into her face. “You're not magic!”

She tried to stop herself from immediately diving in, but her stomach rumbled again and she gave up, tearing into the goat with a ferocity that seemed to surprise even her.

Thought-speech allowed her to continue speaking, though.

“My readings said…”

“Books are wrong. You’re more ‘real’ than I am. More physical, at least. And I still need to eat once a month or so. Have you eaten at all in the last six months?”

The Sphinx paused gorging to shake her head. “There wasn’t much food in the castle to begin with. And the corruption turned it all to sand, anyways. Though I suppose I could have eaten some of the slimes in the kitchens. They seem to breed on nothing.”

“So you don’t mind killing a slime, but can't kill a ghost?”

She stopped, remaining meat left uneaten, despite the protests of her stomach. She glared across the spread.

“Don’t try to twist my thoughts, Strix.”

“J.”

“What?”

“My name. Soldato J, of the Eagle Clan. And this is Tomoro, Scion of the White Griffin. You might as well insult us by our proper names.”

She recognized the name. That much was obvious by the way her eyes widened as she looked back and forth between the two. J hadn’t thought many humans knew of the exploits of the Soldato Battalion and their defeat during the last war. 

Then again, this was a school for battle mages. Perhaps it was not so surprising that they knew of the worst horrors magic could do.

They might even have tried to replicate it, if everything Rahnia said was true. J shivered at the thought; he still awoke at night, memories of his time controlled by the dark army haunting his nightmares.

The Sphinx spoke again, clearly reevaluating the two with the added information.

“Very well, Soldato. Then let me explain myself. The slimes were kept around for components. And garbage disposal. The definition of “garbage” was very broad, and thus they developed a taste for sentient flesh. Given that at no point were they intelligent, nor were they forced into the form, the destruction of one or two would not bother me unduly.” She went back to eating, now speaking from a corner of her mouth. “However, most of the “monsters” in this castle were once people. _Good_ people. Ones who do not deserve to be sent to the abyss because they were forced into a form that is inherently evil.” She paused, gulping down the last bite. “As for the ones who weren’t, they are contained and should not be released unless you truly believe that you can fight hell itself on your own.”

“So there are monsters here that you don’t care for.”

Her ears went back. “A few. I would avoid them if I were you.”

The hunger madness had subsided a bit in her eyes, and she looked across the remainder of the spread.

In a quiet voice, she asked, “Is that really Rahnia’s bread?”

J raised a brow. He could feel the magic emanating from the loaf, the dough filled with the good-will its baker had for the intended recipient.

“You can’t feel it?”

He tore a piece off and handed it over, saying nothing as the Sphinx fumbled to make her paws hold the morsel.

She sniffed at it and smiled. “It's muffled, but yes.” 

“Muffled?”

She flicked her mane. “Can you not sense it? What this place does to magic?”

Tomoro stopped feasting long enough to cock his head to the side and concentrate.

“She's right, J. Something is wrong with the magic here.” His crest raised in agitation. “In fact...it's far worse than it should be. This whole place is evil...”

“Like it was corrupted by the horrors that happened here.” J was not as surprised as Tomoro. He had walked plenty of battlefields that had been the same. Too much pain in a place, and the stones themselves remembered. 

It was not a surprise that the current war was being fought over the same ground as the one that had claimed his tribe. More pain and suffering, poured into a land already overburdened with regrets.

“It's more than that.” The Sphinx said. “Magic itself is corrupt here. Another reason to stay away. Even good magical creatures are eventually turned mad.” She turned to Tomoro. “You shouldn't stay here long. Even passive absorption of this magic is dangerous.”

“Yet you are immune?” J asked.

“Look at me. I'm affected just as much as everything else.”

“But your training let you keep your mind.” he said.

The Sphinx stilled, eyes narrowing, but Tomoro interrupted.

“You don't need to worry about me! I am very well trained. I can pace myself and know when to get out. Unlike him.” He buffeted J with a wing. “He'll keep going until he's mad as a Templar.”

“Tch. I’ve been in far worse places than this. I will no more fall to the darkness than I did to the desert.” J said. 

“You say that now. But this is just the upper levels. It gets worse the deeper you go.” She said, red reflected in her eyes as she stared into the fire. “There are dozens of traps for the unwary, and the dark magic will lead you to them, just for a chance at your soul.”

She spoke from experience, not prophecy, but J took note of it nonetheless. 

But before he could speak, Tomoro said, “Exactly why we’re only coming here a bit every day. Four hours a day or so should be plenty safe, I should think.”

The Sphinx blinked. “What do you mean?”

Tomoro’s eyes crinkled in a smile. “You didn’t think we were just going to leave you here, did you? We’re heroes. We’re going to help.”

Her eyes widened in surprise, as if the food and conversation hadn’t been indication enough of their good will.

“How?”

\------------------------------- 

How indeed. J outlined his plan before he and Tomoro left for the day. They would relay all the information about the castle to the mages' college through the communication scroll. A few quick spells confirmed that while the dark magic of the castle ate away at all it touched, new magic could be performed, though it was weakened and took far more strength to cast.

Then they would wait for reinforcements. To truly begin cleaning the place out they would need a cleric, and one of high skill, to send each monster to its appropriate rest. A mage specialized in reversing enchantments and lifting curses would be necessary as well. Neither would likely be available soon, but J suspected that, should any be given the chance to get away from the endless slog of war to do something truly good, many would jump at the chance. Not for themselves, of course, but rather for their apprentices. 

Wording was not his strong suit, but he imagined Stallion or one of the other Assistants at the mages' college might be able to word it such that B’Net would be a safe place to learn, compared to the battlefront. 

“Safe?” The Sphinx stuttered.

“Yes. All that is required is a map. One which I intend to provide.” He bowed slightly. “With your help, if you will give it.”

She rested her head on her paws, considering. When she hadn’t spoken for another minute, J nodded.

“We will give you time to think over it. Tomoro’s four hours are almost up, anyways.”

The griffin stood and ruffled his feathers, casting a sad eye over the Sphinx’s back. “And tomorrow, we’ll fix those wings, okay?”

“I’ll think about it.”

She stood, wincing slightly at the wound in her side, and made to lead them to the door.

“One more thing.” J pulled a potion from his bag. 

Her eyes focused on the vial. “A healing potion?”

“For your side.” When she raised a brow he added gruffly, “It's not as if you can lead us in such a state. It's for our benefit as much as yours.”

“Right…” 

She led them to the gate, avoiding certain portions of the floor, her paws silent even on the sand, then sat, watching, as they faded from view. J glanced back, at the very end, and saw her still behind them, tail slowly lashing from side to side, lost deep in thought. 

They certainly had given her much to think about.


	7. Chapter 7

Rahnia wrote all her story and the Sphinx’s down quickly, but it still took an hour of her pen scratching across the page for her to feel it complete. J took the time to drink in silence, watching the other patrons from the corner of his eyes, noting the changed among them. Quite a few had faun legs sticking from beneath heavy canvas pants, and others had odd marks and discolored eyes. A few children had been changed as well, the mutations carried from parent to child. 

Apparently, with Rahnia’s trust, the others were willing to show themselves as well. He wondered if any of the other adventurers had seen this, or if they had taken their loot and left too fast to notice the odd diversity of the town.

When the nymph girl was done, he took the paper back, and sketched out his plan as quickly as he could, requesting as many clerics as could be spared.

An hour later, and a second draft of the heavy beer, Rahnia brought him an answer.

As he expected, the writer apologized, acknowledging that the problem was dire, but not pressing. The war had taken a turn for the worse. Would he mind staying near the castle a bit longer? Just until a mage or two could be spared?

No surprises, but it did mean that he would need to find other things to do at night. He wasn’t so foolish as to go into the castle in the dark, but there were other monsters that even the Sphinx would have no compulsion against killing. 

He left Rahnia with a promise to return for more bread the next day, and returned to camp where he suited up for the night.

Tomoro was ready as well, the day’s laborers not nearly enough to quiet the bird to sleep. Knowing that the castle was safe enough, they set out, back into the kingdom proper, to hunt down any true monsters, just as they had during their earlier trip. 

If the days were going to be tedious, at least the nights could be interesting. 

\--------------------------------- 

They dealt with five monsters in outlying towns over the night, spread far enough away from the castle as to be suspicious; it only took two more nights before J confirmed that the corrupted monsters never seemed to go closer than 25 miles to the sands. Yet within the rest of the kingdom they appeared randomly, so much so that guards had stopped patrolling completely during the days and spent the nights in frightened watches, searching the skies and forests for the inevitable attack.

There was no reason for the monsters to avoid the towns around the castle. There was simply an odd, thirty mile or so circle, of no monster activity.

The villagers were thankful for this.

J was suspicious. Were it not for Liger’s need to find his apprentice, there would have been no reason at all for any adventurer or warrior to come anywhere close. With the villagers familiar with the castle, but the wider world completely oblivious to its corruption, there was no one who would step in to solve the problem.

And with the Sphinx standing guard, there was little J could do to begin the process.

Still, he bought a map of the castle from the naiad girl and traveled back, pens and paper as his weapons rather than swords, and the Sphinx allowed him in unmolested. She watched from the pediments, or from her corner, as he wrote down every creature he observed, their location, and their abilities.

At least, that was his intention.

Once again, Tomoro immediately ruined that comfortable plan.

The first day, J left him by the Sphinx as he went to explore the guard room for monsters, only to be called back a moment later with a horrified squawk. 

“You didn’t use the healing potion! Why? Don’t you trust us?”

“It’s not that.” 

J bit back a chuckle. Tomoro was a bundle of dejected feathers, flopped on the floor at the Sphinx’s feet, eyes widened as large as he could get them, while the Sphinx herself was clearly trying to look anywhere but his face. 

“Then why? We want to help.”

“Look. Bird. It’s just …” She looked sheepish, fuzzy lion ears going back. “I can’t open it.”

“Eh?”

She jerked and turned to J, color coming to her cheeks. Clearly, she had not wished to show any weakness before the Soldato. She looked quickly away, but held up a paw to explain.

“These don’t work like hands. I can’t open most things.” 

Then, apparently accepting that the cat was out of the bag, she demonstrated. 

Still flushing furiously, she picked up the little vial between two paws and lowered her mouth to the cork. Grasping it firmly with her teeth, she yanked, and the vial slipped from her paws, no matter how strongly she grasped it.

She spat the vial back into a palm, then let roll out onto the stone floor.

“See?”

“...oh.” Tomoro said.

“You don’t have to rub it in.”

“No,” the griffin shook his head. “We didn’t even think of that. Here. Let me.”

His talons were far more dexterous than the Sphinx’s paws, and he easily maneuvered the vial and plucked the cork out. Then he held it out for her. 

“Say ‘aaaaah’.” 

Her look of envy turned to embarrassment, but she took the vial with her lips and with a toss of her head downed the contents.

The effect was immediate. She had barely set the vial down before she coughed, and a light rippled through her form. For a moment, J thought the potion was doing more harm than good, as the Sphinx’s face screwed up in pain and her form became hazy around the edges. But just as fast as it came, the light was gone and the Sphinx was examining her side, where a healed scar had formed where the wound once was.

“What...what was that?” Tomoro squawked. “That was supposed to be just a simple healing potion!”

The Sphinx looked up from flexing her shoulder. “Healing magic does that to me. Don’t worry, I expected it.”

“Explain.” 

She glanced at J. “I thought it would be obvious.” When neither J or Tomoro indicated that they understood what she was saying, she sighed and continued. “So I really have to explain basic magic theory to two heroes? Ugh.”

Then she stood up, and walked over to one of the dozens of piles of sand strewn against the castle walls.

“Good Magic is just a simplification, right? An easy way of saying “Following the Order of the World”. All living things have a natural Order to them, whether they’re made of flesh or magic. The opposite would be “Chaos”. Things without a natural order. Watch.”

She crouched, and blew on the sand, causing it to blow across the stone floor.

“You cannot predict where each individual grain will fall. There are too many forces acting upon them. Too much information at play. The result is the opposite of a pattern, full of random clumpings and odd spaces.”

She continued,

“The opposite - 'Chaos' magic - is like that. It undoes the order of the world, which usually means death and destruction and, more importantly, pulling things away from their natural course.”

“So a being created by transformation would be inherently chaotic?” J posited.

She nodded her shaggy head. “Exactly. I was once human. Now I’m not. Something like a healing potion attempts to solve the biggest problem - I’m in the wrong shape - before defaulting to the actual injury.”

“So...if we found a strong enough potion, you could become human again?” Tomoro asked.

The Sphinx’s calm expression darkened for a moment. “It would not work, as long as the castle still functions as intended.”

“And how is that, exactly?” J asked.

She raised her brows. “I thought it was obvious.”

When he shook his head, she sighed and stood again.

“This whole place undoes the Order of the world. The sand is a result of the process, but also demonstrates it well.” She glanced around, and locked on a loaf of bread. “Watch this.”

She picked the loaf up between her teeth, then walked into the center of the courtyard and placed it on the stone. Then she stepped back, and tapped twice in quick succession, knocking on the stone. 

A moment later, the lamprey-ghost appeared, broom in hand, apparently oblivious to the Sphinx as she began to work, sweeping the sand before her.

The Sphinx returned to them. “Watch the bread.”

The first time the immaterial broom passed over the loaf, there was no obvious change. But each time the ghost went past, sweeping at the sand, the color on it dulled. By the third time, there was a crust of sand on the top, and the broom knocked it off. By the tenth time, the loaf was almost completely gone, color and life leached out of it, leaving behind nothing but dust.

When she saw J understood, the Sphinx added, “Anything organic in the castle is long gone. Only iron and silk can stop the degradation. The ghosts make it happen faster, but everything is affected, sooner or later.” 

“That's why you made us take everything with us when we left.” Tomoro said.

She nodded. “It would have been dust by the morning. At least you'll get some use out of it.”

“No, we're bringing it back for you!” Tomoro insisted. “Every day you're going to eat something, and I'm going to fix those wings before we leave “

“And we won't leave until the evil is purged from this place.” J added.

The Sphinx narrowed her eyes, but did not tell him off for threatening her friends.

Then again, Tomoro spoke so quickly she did not have much chance to. The griffin easily took control of the situation, butting her towards the mattresses.

And - “J, you help too. Get her other wing.”

“Uh. No.” The Sphinx's wings snapped behind her, enough feathers forced out of place that both Tomoro and J winced. “I'm not letting that butcher anywhere near my wings.” She sniffed. “You can go map the courtyard. You won’t get into any trouble there.”

That seemed a sensible enough option, and J would have been happy to agree, but Tomoro clipped him over the head when he opened his mouth to speak.

"No. The faster we get this done, the faster you _both_ can get to mapping. You agreed to help us, right? Well, we're helping you first. And, if this place is as dangerous as you say, eventually you might need to get us out of a bad situation. You'll only be able to do that if you're happy and healthy. Plus - “ The griffin inspected a claw, not meeting his master’s eye. “I wouldn’t want J running off and getting himself killed out of stupidity. Someone has to look after him.”

The Strix looked so affronted that the Sphinx couldn’t help but hide a giggle, which only made him glower more. 

“...alright. Why don’t you take out the map, and I’ll show you what I know, while Tomoro gets my wings.” 

His eyes narrowed, but he pulled ink and parchment out of his bag and sat across from her without further grumbles. Tomoro chirped happily, and got to work, not embarrassed in the slightest as he buried his face and talons in the Sphinx’s wings, carefully raking through the stiff, listless feathers and beginning to straighten plumes. 

It was the first time in months that she’d received a kind touch, and the sphinx had to fight not to flinch away or lash out. As it was, she froze, muscles tense, until her heart stopped pounding and she could focus on the map spread out before her.

“This is not very detailed.” the Strix grumbled, eyes following the simple lines and descriptions penciled in the margins. 

“Rahnia wouldn’t know the details. She only worked in the kitchens.” 

“And you didn’t?” He glanced up through his fringe of hair, hiding the intent of the question. 

The sphinx sniffed, but made no indication she knew the purpose of the question. “I was a cleaner. Even dungeons need sweeping. So I went just about everywhere.” She turned her attention to the map. “We are here, just inside the first gate. There isn’t much here, just the wights and the Walcofindes.” 

“The what?” 

“The Walcofindes. Undead made by entombing laborers behind walls. They attack anyone who gets too close. Any time a piece of wall crumbled, those in charge made sure to put someone in during repairs. As long as you avoid any new masonry, it really isn’t a problem.” 

“And how many of these wights and Walcofindes are there?” 

She considered. “There are about twenty wights in this courtyard and about fifteen Walcofindes in the walls.”

“...how were the wights made?”

“Oh, they took most of the cleaning staff out and melted them into the floor with a dragon.” She said it lightly, but her eyes were hard, and her nose flared, remembering the scent, reaching all the way to the rooftop, where she had stood, frozen by her _geas_ , tears streaming down her face. 

“You saw it?” 

She nodded, claws making lines in the sand as she pushed away the memory.

“When?”

“Ten years ago. Gimlet - the Master Sorcerer here - had decided human staff were more trouble than they were worth. So they assigned each ‘extra’ worker a space, and performed a spell that allowed them to continue their work in death. Then they burned them. Only about half became ghosts. It was considered a success.” 

She stared into the darkness, eyes unseeing, until J spoke.

“I knew men like that, during the war. Those who would rather unthinking machines to fallible minds, and found the undead an easy solution.” 

The Sphinx laughed, a half-broken bark. “Where do you think they got the idea from?”

\----------------------------------------- 

They spoke for hours, the Sphinx listing, step by step, each monster that inhabited the upper castle. 

There was a dragon guarding the treasury. A basilisk in the library, the once-librarians turned to mice to feed their leader’s insatiable appetite. Every gargoyle moved, every door could talk. There were eyes everywhere and spells running through every wall. 

J had thought he understood the scale of the evil in this place, but he had underestimated it at every turn. Yet somehow, in the center of it all, was the Sphinx, navigating everything with sympathy and compassion for the murdered and enslaved creatures she lived with. 

“The dark magic still works.” She explained. “All the rules that the wizards put in, to control the creatures and make them do their bidding - it all still holds. As long as you follow those rules, it is possible to survive.”

“So how did you discover the rules?” 

She looked at him like he was a fool. “I was told. Each new room I was told to clean, I was instructed how to avoid the traps. I was ensorcelled just as much as the rest, so it was all I could do to obey. But I knew enough magic on my own to avoid anything they might have forgotten to tell me. It’s the only reason I survived.”

“And in the end, you had been everywhere in the castle?”

“I don’t know about _everywhere_. But ghosts can’t clean up magic circles, and are too stupid to clean dungeons. And in the end, I was such a part of the scenery that they didn’t think twice about showing me a new room. It wasn’t as if I could do anything about it.”

The way she spoke, airily but with a hidden bitterness, suggested that she had tried very hard to resist, and it had ultimately proved futile. J could sympathize. His transition to a general in the forces of darkness had not been easy either. In some ways, it might have been kinder for them to simply strip away all his memories and erase his past. The fog he had lived in during that time was the only reason he could even attempt sanity now. To watch and be unable to do nothing, while still retaining enough will to know what one saw was wrong...that was just as cruel as what he experienced. 

He shivered. 

“I think that’s enough for today.” 

“We barely covered the ground floor - “

“Yes, but your griffin’s time is up.” 

J glanced up, and found the Sphinx sitting very still. Tomoro had ceased moving as well, and when J stood, he saw why.

The white griffin’s eyes were wide, showing nothing but blackness rather than his normal sunny orange irises. His beak was clamped on one of the Sphinx’s wings, grinding down with enough force to make the bone creak, while one talon was grasping her flank, four neat little holes beneath the claws, leaking black blood.

J swore, and ordered Tomoro to stand down, the command far stronger than he had ever used before. Usually, he merely pointed Tomoro in the right direction and the griffin obeyed on his own. This time he had to force the command into his mount’s brain, yanking him back from the precipice in a way that was painful to both of them. 

Tomoro squawked and flapped his wings, but he came to stand beside J anyways, shaking his head to clear it of the dark magic. The Strix kept a hand on Tomoro’s flank, grounding him, and he quickly packed up the map supplies with half a mind, the rest consumed with worry for his friend. 

The Sphinx surprised him by standing, ignoring her own wounds, and helping him to push Tomoro out of the castle. Even as the griffin tried to obey his master, the dark magic locked his limbs and the conflicting commands left him shaking, blank eyes wide and a broken expression on his face. 

J was grateful to the Sphinx for her help, and he breathed a sigh of relief as Tomoro’s eyes lightened as soon as he tumbled into the sand outside the castle gates. 

“Get him past the sand, and he should be fine.” The Sphinx said, not leaving the shadow of the castle. 

J tugged at the makeshift harness, and felt no small relief as Tomoro obeyed blindly. 

“Will you be alright?” He asked as he quickly packed the supplies into Tomoro’s saddlebag.

The Sphinx blinked, clearly surprised at the question - or perhaps the fact that he thought to ask. “I’ve had worse. Take care of him.” The concern in her voice was enough to spur him onward, and he nodded once before pulling the griffin on out into the desert. 

\------------------------------------

Tomoro was appropriately embarrassed when he finally shook off the compulsion enough to think for himself, about an hour after they had returned to camp. But it was a hard hour for J, and a worse two hours before, as he had pushed the ensorcelled beast through the sands, battling the outside compulsions to get them free as fast as possible, all the while feeling the darkness eating away at his friend’s heart. It was worse, in a way, than simply forcing his wounded body through the sands the first time. This time, he wasn’t dogged with pain, but with memory, with the silent sands mocking his steps with the memories of the war, and another, greater, griffin slipping away from him, screaming as both their minds were overwhelmed, despair and evil rising up and stealing everything he ever loved in one, horrid nightmare. 

Only Tomoro’s distress pulled J from his own, and he forced himself to watch the white griffin. Each toss of his head, each angry ruffle of feathers, each frustrated click of his beak, until the blank eyes finally cleared and J could breathe easy again. 

Tomoro did not comment on the moment J came to his side and buried himself in his mount’s feathers. That, by itself, showed the beast had come back to himself. Instead he threw a wing over J’s shoulder and ran a careful beak through J’s plume. 

Both shook, for different reasons. And if J clutched at Tomoro’s side hard enough to draw feathers of his own, the griffin seemed to take it as his due.


	8. Chapter 8

“You have to check if the Sphinx is alright.” Tomoro insisted, the next morning. The morning had found them both cuddled against the other, the constant hum of the other’s heartbeats enough to keep the fear at bay. 

J shook his head. “I’m not leaving you.” 

“I’m fine. Getting out of the castle cleared everything up, just like she said it would. But I might have hurt her, and I can’t go and check, so you’ve _got_ to.”

“But - “

“Plus, if you stay here, you’ll wear a hole into the ground with your pacing, or pet all my feathers out.”

“Tomoro…” 

The griffin buffeted J with a wing. “No complaints. We both know I just need to rest, and stay away from the castle. You need to do something, or you’ll tie yourself into knots. Go back, and finish fixing the girl’s wings, and we’ll both have a productive day.” 

“But - “

The next shove of wings was much harder, enough to unbalance J, but with enough playful energy that there was no doubt that Tomoro was back to his old self. 

They argued back and forth for the next half hour, but J knew when he was beat - at least when it came to his companion. 

The sphinx, however, was shocked to see him. 

“You came _back_?” 

He squinted into the bright sky to find her leaning over the parapet, disgraceful wings out for balance, eyes huge. 

“What of it?”

A quick glance confirmed that her injury had not healed, and now blood had undone all of Tomoro’s work from the day prior. 

“I figured you’d be half way across the country by now. Or - are you here for your payment? You’ve more than earned it - I’m sure the College would understand if you took the money and -” 

“Tomoro was worried about you.”

The Sphinx, who had momentarily ducked below the wall to retrieve whatever bauble she thought was worth his time, immediately popped back up. “Eh?!”

“He wouldn’t leave me alone until I came and checked on you.” J crossed his arms, indicating with a derisive flick of his wings that this was in no way his idea. “He made me promise to finish his work.” 

A host of emotions flashed across the Sphinx’s face - faster than J could easily read - but she settled on surprised with a small, cautious smile on her face. 

“That’s...that’s very nice of him.” Perhaps it was the sun, but her cheeks seemed to color for a moment, before a more serious expression returned to her face. “But I would never take you away from your companion beast. You need not - “

“You fail to understand how insistent he was. Nor how persuasive he can be.” J said, and strode through the gate. 

He hid a smile at the scrabble of claws on stone above him, and was not surprised in the least when the Sphinx tumbled without an ounce of grace onto the pavement next to him a moment later. That alone proved how much she needed repairs to her wings...and get actual training on using them. Though that could just have been bleed-over from Tomoro’s thoughts on the matter. The griffin had been very insistent. 

He looked down at the Sphinx, who was trying her best to look dignified as she untangled herself, and allowed a single smirk.

“Plus, I am a Strix of Honor. You have offered my mount a deal, and I will make good on it. Whether it pleases you or not.”

The continuing shocked expression on the Sphinx’s face, as she followed him back to her corner and sat meekly preparing the tea, was almost worth leaving Tomoro for the day.


	9. Chapter 9

Strix did not mind silence. They lived and breathed it, moving through it with no more than a whisper of their own. 

But the silences of J’s childhood were not dead, not in the way of the castle. They were the silences of moving grass and feather light wingbeats, not of empty halls in which sound was quite literally swallowed up by sand and darkness. 

Perhaps Tomoro had fallen faster than anticipated, not because of a lapse in concentration, but because of it. The poor beast had been consumed by the silence, until the sand and darkness colored his feathers and stared back out through his eyes. 

J would not fall so easily prey to such things, but he was less irritated than he would have otherwise been when the Sphinx spoke as he began work, this time beginning by brushing her down just as he would Tomoro.

“I was sent here when I was nine years old. To be safe. Away from the war.” She gave a hollow laugh, then flinched as J rubbed a balm over her still-raw wounds. 

“Two months after I arrived, I stood on the parapet with the mages when they unleashed the dragon on the servants. They were incredibly pleased. Two experiments a success - they could control their dragon, and could create undead en masse. 

“There were other children watching. Children of famous mages, or that of noblemen. They didn’t scream like I did. I still don’t know if the darkness simply affected them more quickly, or if they truly didn’t care about the fate of mere servants. 

“Or maybe I would have been just like the rest, except that _Silvie_ was down there. The maid in charge of the dormitories. Who had held me when I cried for my mother and my home. Who promised everything would be alright, and that Master Gimlet loved all the children who came to him.

She paused, then said, “She believed in this place. And I saw her burn for it.”

She stretched a wing and looked over her shoulder at him. 

“That is why the ‘monsters’ here are so important to me. Each one of them was a person once, just like us. If you kill them now - almost all of them will be damned, simply because of the form they were forced to assume and the madness this place brings. I cannot say for certain that all the monsters in the castle were good people, but if they are to be judged, it should be on their actions as people, not what this place has made them become.”

“Hmm.” was his response. He didn’t quite believe it. In his experience, monsters were driven by the same desires as they were when they still had their minds. Love. Lust. Loyalty.

He said as much, even as he instructed her to roll onto her side, then winced as she awkwardly pulled in her wings before she flipped.

“You’re not completely wrong.” She said, a rumble in her chest at the firm, easy strokes of the brush. “When transforming into another living thing, personality has a large effect. Take Rhania.”

He hummed again, working at a mat beneath her front leg while he listened.

“A water nymph seems perfect for her. Shy, quiet, easily startled. But she has a core of strength, enough to hide fugitives from the castle despite her fear. No other creature would fit her so well, and that is likely why she survived her transformation.

“But the undead are different. They are motivated by baser instincts. Often, the method of their death can overwrite any thoughts they had of their time alive. The mages spent quite a lot of time experimenting on that. Trying to pare down individuals to their most basic instincts, manipulating their deaths to give them the results they were looking for.”

“...what did they want?”

She looked at him, head cocked, eyes thoughtful, and rolled back over, though he was not yet done.

“They wanted _you_.”

\-------------------------------------------------- 

“What?!”

Five hours later, as J related his conversation with the Sphinx, Tomoro squawked and nearly dug trenches into the dirt with his talons. 

J shook his head, and leaned back against his friend, moodily staring into the fire as he thought of everything he’d learned. 

It was easy enough to be overwhelmed by guilt just for his part in the last war. Now, to think he had some part in creating this new horror, could have made him spiral into despair again. 

But the Sphinx had overwritten the thought almost as quickly as she had introduced it.

\---------------------------------------------------------------

“Me?” He’d whispered, sitting up quickly.

She turned, tail flicking back and forth. “Is it such a surprise? You were marvelous. A perfect example of what they wished to do with their experiments: To take a pure soul, corrupt it, strip it of every resistance, and create an impossibly powerful weapon. It was everything they wanted.” 

Then, before he could begin to process her words, she added,

“Of course, they were wrong. Even I could see that.”

He blinked rapidly, head spinning, and she shifted so she could look directly at him. 

“What?”

“None of their experiments worked. They spent all their time trying to make a Strix, and never got further.”

“...no Strix would come anywhere near this place. It's a perversion of nature.”

“Exactly. And no human could be made into a Strix, because any human with a similar enough outlook would react in the same way. You were very inspiring, in that way.”

“First you tell me I’m responsible for monsters, then you say I’m an inspiration. Please make up your mind, Sphinx.”

She rested her head on her paws, tail still swinging. 

“You were inspiring to me. By then, I was a nothing, no name, no power, everything about me stripped away. The geas that controlled my life made me do things I hated, and I lived in a world where no one seemed to care.

“Then I heard about you.”

“A general of the dark army? A creature so corrupted by the darkness that nothing could sway him? A monster?” He nearly spat at the thought, shame coursing through his veins. 

She blinked. “Yes. All of that. You didn’t seem so different than me.”

“I killed thousands. My countrymen died by my hand. Everything I ever was - “

“All narrowed down to a simple thing. Loyalty. Perseverance. Impossible odds.” He stuttered, but she continued. “The mages here couldn’t see. But I did. Everything that made you terrible, it was just a perversion of your last moment on the battlefield.” She shrugged. “They only saw you as a Strix. I figured, you must have been a person first. A person that was willing to die for what you believed in. Then, I wondered if I could do the same.” 

“That’s not...that isn’t how it happened.” 

“Really? Prove it.”

\----------------------------------------------------- 

In the tales, it seemed so simple. Pure soul. Dark forces. And evil won the day.

But it was so much more complicated than that.

He’d been sent to the war camp so early that he did not remember his mother’s face. His first memory was the gleam of sunlight off the White Griffin’s plumes, standing with its rider, watching the daily training. 

The great beast, the last in a line that stretched all the way back to the Roc Griffins of old, had glanced at him, and he’d known instantly that he would follow that creature through hell itself. That was the kind of creature the White Griffin was. 

By fourteen, he had risen above all his peers, excelling in everything from combat training to catechisms sent up to the Great Beasts of old. His diligence had won him the most coveted spot for a young Strix warrior: he became the squire to Abel, the White Griffin’s rider. 

A human knight would expect his squire to care for his mount, and Abel expected nothing less of J. Later, he suspected that she had chosen him specifically for his reverence for the beast, for he gave the giant creature the best care he could design, studying long hours into the night to understand its habits through history and hunting every morning to provide it fresh meat. 

The White Griffin was the most powerful creature in all of the northern wilds. It, along with its successive riders, had led the Strix in battle for five centuries, acting as a rallying call for every Strix in the army and a symbol for every griffin rider to aspire to. 

It chose a new rider every twenty years, and J could only hope that when Abel’s time came, he would have the honor of continuing his people’s legacy into the future. 

But the war came when he was barely fifteen. It swept in from the West, the dark invaders attacking Strix settlements first, but expanding on to human and elvish strongholds quickly. 

The Strix warriors were proud, unwilling to work with outsiders, but soon the war forced them to work side by side with the armies of their southern neighbors. Battles grew from mere skirmishes to full on assaults, to sieges that lasted months. And despite their wary disdain of others, the fast mobility of the Strix made them key players. J and his fellow squires acted as scouts and message carriers, while those with griffins provided air support for human ground troops and flew commanders across battlefields. 

The war was ugly, brutal, and seemingly unending, but to J it was everything he had ever trained for. Each time he and his companions delivered a critical piece of information, or fought off enemies from a caravan, he felt his purpose fulfilled. Even as his fellows died or buckled under the burden of endless war, he continued to become stronger. 

Then came the siege of the Red City. The armies of the humans had been drawn to the South, leaving the northern city barely defended and unprepared when an unprecedented enemy army appeared without warning and surrounded the whole metropolis. With the human armies weeks away, the Strix alone could reach the city and provide support. 

They held out as best they could, evacuating inhabitants day by day through magic portals, flying in supplies, fighting off the daily barrages, shoring up the castle defenses and doing nightly patrols for any monsters that might use the shadows for easy transportation. 

The Strix held out for two months, when the dark forces finally mustered a force powerful enough to take the city. Surely they had known that the human armies were on their way. Or perhaps they had sensed that their prey had finally stored enough power to open a portal that could evacuate the whole city, rather than just the wealthy and powerful. 

J was helping a human mother with an infant Strix child through the portal when he felt Abel fall. The memory was forever etched into his mind; the sight of wide purple eyes and tiny hands dusted with feathers, proof that both humans and his people could occasionally set aside their differences...and then the scream that echoed across the whole city, bringing with it the rage and anguish of a living god robbed of its priest. 

The White Griffin landed at J’s side a moment later, Abel’s dying body still in the saddle despite the hole drilled through her chest. Blood seeped through white feathers. Light faded from red eyes. Somewhere, in the back of J’s mind, there was a roar of sound. But in the moment, he simply took the reigns that Abel held out as she fell from the saddle.

He did not look down as he mounted up. He didn’t spend a second to mourn. He merely leapt into the empty saddle, and screamed a call to the other warriors and urged the White Griffin on. 

Whoever rode the White Griffin commanded the Strix. There was no moment for hesitation, no moment for doubt. Hundreds of years of tactics flooded into his mind from the beast, and he became little more than a mouthpiece for that history. The troops rallied to his call, and they all pushed into the sea of darkness as one. 

For the others, perhaps, time passed. They might have noticed the arc of the sun, as they lay dying on the ground. Some might have felt weariness seep into their bones, until they could no longer hold their weapons, and fell to the onslaught. Others felt the pain, as their dark foes brought forces to bear too monstrous to consider and inevitable in their destruction. Mages screamed as their magic ran out, warriors cried as their mounts were overwhelmed, men and women died one by one as the full brunt of the enemy's forces were brought to bear on the city. 

But to J it was one unending moment. A force greater than himself pushed him forward, and each casualty was just a number, each wound merely a fact added to his mental map. He remembered, vaguely, the moment his sword broke. He grabbed a cursed blade from a creature he’d just slain, and went back to fighting the current behemoth, ignoring the searing pain it caused. Then he did it again and again, vaguely aware that his forces were diminishing, until he was the only remaining Strix in the air. His fellow squires were gone as well, having rallied the limited ground forces and died protecting the gate. The city was mostly deserted, the portal fluctuating as the darkness drained more magic, only the foolish or suicidal remaining. 

Had he a mind left, he would have hoped their sacrifice was enough. But the battle-fury ended not with triumph, but the shuddering feel of a bolt hitting home. 

The White Griffin gave one, last, scream. They fell as one, crashing into the black ooze that all their enemies had returned to. 

J’s last thoughts were horror, as his mind returned and he felt the beast’s heart still beneath him.

His death was meaningless. Another warrior, gone for a noble cause. He could have wished for nothing less. But the death of the White Griffin, the very symbol of his people, and their last link to the divine…

His scream joined the beast’s, and as the darkness overtook him, despair and pain overwhelmed his last remaining thoughts. 

\----------------------------------------------- 

“Oi! Earth to bird-boy!” 

J jerked from his memories to find the Sphinx’s face far too close to his own. Her momentary look of concern was quickly replaced with a familiar sneer, and she sat back, buffeting him with a wing as she rearranged. 

“As I was saying, your existence might have inspired the mages here to expand their experimentation, but they were well on their way to that conclusion before the war even began. What you did before then saved the lives of 50,000 people. And then - “

“I killed the White Griffin.” 

She stopped. 

“Had I known what was at stake...I would have let thousands more die, if it meant saving the symbol of my people. Instead - “

“Instead, it took the choice from you.”

He looked at her sharply, but she simply shrugged. “The mages devoured every account of the battle. I listened in. Seems to me your ‘symbol’ was no more a coward than you were. It saw the odds, and decided for itself to fight for the city. The fact that you’re here proves that it wasn’t the only one who saw it that way.” 

She said it casually, but suddenly J knew there was more to her words. He barely needed to reach out before the memory was in his head, shared as easily as he might have with Tomoro, the raw emotions of the Sphinx’s own wounds bleeding over as easily as his as she pressed her head to the palm of his hand and gave over her reason.


	10. Chapter 10

“He _escaped_?!” 

The girl in the memory nearly dropped the tray she had been carrying, and only instinct protected it from clattering on the floor and alerting the mages behind the door. 

“Some child was able to cure him. The white mages still don’t know how it was possible.” 

Eyes wide, the girl drifted closer to the door, ignoring the stains growing on her clothes as she pressed the dishes close to her chest to silence them further. The war had stretched for three years since the dark creatures called Zonders had unveiled their ability to turn even the purest souls into mindless destructive monsters. The mages of Castle B’Net had watched with wonder at the powers they wielded, converging on any scraps of information and passing it round like magpies to inspire their own dark experiments. 

Now, the forces of light were pushing the darkness back, and the whole castle was in a titter, desperate to recover any and all remaining information before the portal to the dark dimension was finally closed. 

They were less disappointed at the demons’ failure than the girl would have thought - then again the mages at B’Net were petty enough to revel in the defeat of someone that could otherwise be thought of a competitor, while still looting every scrap of information from the corpses that remained. 

“Their power must be waning on this plane. I heard that the Cruel Phoenix was fighting the mind control even before the boy got to him.” 

She peeked through the door, watching the mages as they looked through their scrying window, apprentices whispering closer to the door, frustration on their faces while hope bloomed on hers. 

_“If he can escape, perhaps I can?”_

The words were hissed in her ear, and she yelped and spun, only to find ArchMage Gimlet behind her. 

The man looked like a walking skeleton, gaunt face and bone-like hands, and the malignant energy that propelled him forward was palpable in the air. He must have hidden his power to sneak up on her. Now, he stood to his full height and sneered down at her.

Her _geas_ took hold, and the plates clattered to the ground as the magic forced her into a parody of a curtsy, low enough that her legs creaked and one knee nearly brushed the ground. She could feel as a rictus of a smile was forced on her face, and hot shame flushed her cheeks. 

“Don’t think there is any hope in this for you, little kitten. The Strix may have shook off his binds, but have you considered what fate might befall him now?” 

Resolutely, she kept her eyes to the ground, allowing the spell to hide her true expression. She had found, through painful trial, that the more she appeared to comply, the more freedom in her own thoughts she could have. Her downturned eyes seemed to please Gimlet. 

“He will return to a home that he himself helped to destroy. Alive, with the knowledge of the thousands he has killed, and bearing the responsibility for the death of his people’s god-incarnate. Do you think anyone will accept him now, with the blood that stains his hands? And how will he live with himself, knowing what he has done?”

She ground her teeth. Gimlet’s point was not lost on her, but he seemed to wish to drive it home further.

“Strix are creatures of honor. It would have been a blessing for one of his ilk to die in combat. I doubt he lives out the year. Either one of his own will end his suffering, or he will do it himself.” 

Gimlet reached out a hand and ran it through her hair, his touch sending a shiver of revulsion down her spine, then grabbed her chin and tilted it up so he could look into her eyes. 

“You are just a pale imitation of him. A good first effort. But do not think that the rest of the world would accept you any easier than they would accept him. Your hands are just as stained, kitten. No excuses will undo what you have done, and they will reject you as surely as they will reject him. There is no escape you can hope for but submission.” 

He dropped face, and the _geas_ allowed her to collapse to the floor because it pleased him to see her humiliated. 

“The sooner you give up, girl, the sooner we can make you into something useful. Or you will spend the rest of your days feeding corpses to the kitchen slimes? Either way, you will never be worthy of the light of day again.”

Hot tears stun her cheeks as the _geas_ took hold again and forced her to begin picking up the plates. Gimlet laughed as he left, doors swinging open to reveal more chuckling faces of his adoring students who so loved seeing another humiliated. 

But with her eyes turned resolutely to the ground, none could see the expression held there, else they might have questioned the effectiveness of Gimlet’s words. 

For there was no fear or sorrow in her eyes. Just burning, flaming rage.

\------------------------------------- 

J drew back his mind with a shout, the emotions held in the Sphinx’s memory fierce and painful enough to burn even after only a few moments. 

No wonder she alone had kept her mind after being turned monstrous. 

“...how long?” He finally asked, half in a whisper. 

She shook her mane, pretending indifference to the memory. “You know as well as I. Ten years since the war started. I barely lasted six weeks before I tried to attack the lot of them. So I have been under the geas for nine years.”

Nine years. J himself had spent three under the control of the Zonders. With the memory of her shame still present in his mind, he could almost be grateful that they had stolen his mind and memories from him. The shame of what he did would never leave him, but at least it had been only a fraction of his soul that had committed those atrocities. She had been present for the entire time the Mages controlled her, aware of the wrongness around her, but incapable of doing anything to resist the compulsion.

“The serving girl said you got as many as you could out of the castle.”

The Sphinx’s shoulders were not made to shrug, but she attempted one anyway. “The geas was a simple thing. Nothing as _sophisticated_ \- “ she barked the word sardonically, “as what the Zonders and their Masters can do. They made me into the perfect servant. They never said I couldn’t get rid of the competition.” 

She said it flippantly, but J sensed years of struggle behind her easy words. Years of pushing at the boundaries of her control, learning her limits, and hiding her rebellions in plain sight. 

He considered the picture she had given him of her life in the castle, the glimpses of the mages that controlled the place. 

“I understand how the townspeople and servants could be fooled by the magic here. But how could the mages from the outside notice nothing?” 

Her face darkened for a moment, clearly reliving some painful memory. Then she shook it off. 

“It's probably easier if I show you. I could use a walk anyways.” 

She stood and stretched, oddly seeming more comfortable in her body after reliving a memory of her previous one. 

He stood as well, his own body stiff from sitting so long. 

As he stretched, the Sphinx disappeared around the corner to the outer wall, then reappeared a moment later with a knife between her teeth. J recognized it as the one she had tried to bribe him with five days ago. 

With her mouth occupied, she spoke directly to his mind to answer his curious look.

“We’re going by the treasury. It’s the safest place for artifacts. And with you here, I won’t need to bribe anyone else for a while.” 

Then, she instructed, “Place your hand on my shoulder, and follow my steps. If you leave the path, I won’t be coming to your rescue.”

What followed was the strangest trip J had yet experienced. In any other situation, he might have suspected that she was playing a trick on him, but her explanations and instructions were deadly serious. 

She showed him how to see where new stonework indicated a builder buried in the walls, libel to catch any stray passerby and drag them back into their stone tomb. She pushed him away from strands of hanging ivy and spider web, both as likely to strangle the unwary. They zig-zagged through halls of moving armor, and ducked beneath high doorways to avoid triggering trap spells. 

He might have guessed at all those precautions. But there were stranger ones as well. There was a pavilion with sculptures of twisted forms surrounding a basin of water with a golden top spinning just above the water, which the Sphinx sang to as they crossed the space. There were walls she paused at, and leaned into murmuring words he couldn’t hear, but which made the tension in the air relax, for just a moment. In one room, she instructed him to stand in the door, and she entered only to shift a prism slightly with her nose, turning a reflected patch of light on the floor from red to green. For these she offered no explanation, but he felt the effects in the same portion of his mind that recognized danger. 

And the monsters...there were dozens of them. Small, fuzzy things that glanced around corners and hissed at him when they approached, but scuttled off when they saw the Sphinx. Spiders as big as rooms that chittered at them, but drew their webs aside to let them pass. Eyes that blinked at them from floors and walls, but never manifested anything more deadly, to which the Sphinx sometimes nodded. 

“Everything on the upper floors had a use.” She explained as they walked. “Ghosts and specters to do the work, automated defenses, and quite a lot of ‘pets’ kept around for materials. Without the mages around, everything has just...frozen. The monsters don’t fight, because it wouldn’t have been useful for them to do so. Ditto for why they do not attack anyone who has the right keys.”

“Are you suggesting there are areas of the castle that are not so...peaceful?”

She was silent, and for a moment J wondered if she was communing with another strange monster. Instead, her mental voice turned grim when she responded.

“I have done what I can for those in the dungeons and the experiment rooms. The deeper one descends, the more dangerous the guardians become, and the more the nature of this place affects them. There are rooms even I would hesitate to enter, especially those which are controlled by the remnants of the mages themselves.”

J was about to ask more, when the Sphinx halted in front of a set of ornate doors. 

“Here’s the treasury. Don’t say anything while I talk to Red.” But after her harsh words, she added, “Try not to laugh either.”

With that confusing order, she butted her head against the doors and pushed them open.


	11. The Dragon

The room was everything the kind of adventurer J was pretending to be could have wished for. 

At least, at first glance. It was large and brightly lit, mage light illuminating heaps of glittering finery on the floor, with the largest pile well above even J’s impressive height. There were lush tapestries on the walls and carpets with gold embroidery on the floors. But on a second glance, it quickly became apparent that whoever had gathered the castle’s wealth had more in common with a magpie than an accountant. There were gold coins mixed in with heaps of silverware and fine goblets filled in equal parts with gemstones and shattered glass. None of it was particularly well taken care of either, with stuffed creatures moldering in corners and silver slowly tarnishing, moths chewing their way through furs and carpets alike. 

And atop the largest pile, tail curled protectively around the trash and treasure with equal fervor, was a red dragon. 

Dragons had been the hereditary enemies of griffins since ancient time, when the great dragons of old fought against the Roc Griffins for land, servants, and tribute. Vicious battles had been fought, resulting in scars that still shaped the land eons later. Canyons had been carved out by their talons, plains flattened by their vicious battles, and mountains grew from their corpses. 

So J had steeled himself when entering the room, certain that of all the creatures the Sphinx could have shown him, this was the one most likely to overwhelm his control. Eons of genetic memory would surely call out to murder this dangerous creature as soon as he laid eyes upon it.

Instead, he had to clamp a hand over his mouth to prevent himself from laughing.

The creature was tiny. Barely larger than the Sphinx herself, it napped like a kitten on the top of the pile, tongue suck out and drooling acid down its treasure. There was a fuzzy cushion grasped in its front arms, and it was snoring slightly. 

The Sphinx coughed loudly, and the dragon snorted at the noise. It peaked an eye open, glancing at the Sphinx and seeming to dismiss her, only to then catch sight of J himself. 

The change was near instantaneous. One moment it was relaxed, mouth open and loose, the next it scrabbled upward, flinging the cushion away and snapping its mouth shut so fast that it bit its tongue. That in turn prompted its eyes to cross in pain, and it tumbled backwards off the pile, just as clumsy as the Sphinx herself, thumping its way down only to land with a crash on the other side. 

J bit his lip, and glanced at the Sphinx. Her face was stern, but there was a sardonic pleasure in her eyes, showing that she too found the display buffoonish.

The dragon reappeared a moment later, climbing back to the top of its pile with an affected grace, sniffing as it looked down its snout at them. 

“Who dares disturb my slumber?” 

The Sphinx spat out the dagger and spoke. 

“Red, I need to make an exchange.” 

The dragon sniffed again, eyes narrowing. “You will address us properly, servant.” 

Though her face did not change in expression, J received the strong feeling of the Sphinx rolling her eyes.

“Oh mighty Red, it is I, your humble servant, who wishes a moment of your time.” 

“Better. And who is this?” It turned to J. “We do not like the smell of this one.”

“A visitor. One who wished to gaze upon your splendor.”

The praise made the creature swell with pride, and it nodded regally at J. 

“As you should, bird-man. You stand before the Great, The Mighty, the Wise Dragon of B’Net. You will tell all you meet in your travels of our majesty.” 

It preened, as cocky as a griffin chick after its first coat of feathers, and about as much brain present in its head. 

The Sphinx coughed again. “As for the exchange…”

The dragon turned back to her, and hissed. “Have you brought us something new? Something beautiful? Worthy of our glory?”

Again the feeling of rolled eyes, while the Sphinx’s face remained carefully blank. “Yes. A cursed dagger only one such as you is worthy of.” 

She nudged it forward with a paw, and the dragon leaned down to examine it critically. 

“Oh! Lovely! But so poorly cared for. But no worries, my dear, soon you will be safe at home…” It cooed, then glanced up, eyes narrowing. “And in exchange?” 

“Something hardly worthy of your splendor. A key. Iron. Not silver, or gold.”

The dragon’s nose wrinkled. “We do not like iron. It does not shine. And we have many better keys.” A thought crossed its mind, and it reared up. “Do you wish to take one of them?!”

“No, of course not. Just a small key. And ugly one. One that looks…” The Sphinx glanced around the room casually, then pointed to the wall behind the dragon. “One that looks like that.”

The key she pointed to was hung above a pile with a slightly larger percentage of actual valuables. It did look out of place amidst the shining splendor. Yet the cord it hung on was intricately embroidered, and the mount fitted the weight of the thing perfectly. So while it looked worthless, had J himself intended to raid the vault, he would have made sure to swipe the key, simply for its positioning alone. 

But the dragon apparently did not care, because it looked between the shiny dagger and the bland key, and easily made the decision. With a flick it pounced on the dagger, and then flew up to the key and removed it. Then for a tense instant it hesitated as it held the iron in its claws, studying the piece, eyes narrowing as if reconsidering. 

Then the moment passed, and it dropped the cord round the Sphinx’s neck, head snapping back to its new toy and seemingly forgetting that the key ever existed.

“Yes. We have the perfect place for you. Yes we do~” It jumped to another pile, this one full of weapons, sending forks and knives skittering as it clambered to the top. “And you, ugly creatures, you will leave. We have no more need for you.”

The Sphinx bowed, though the dragon had stopped paying any attention to them, too enraptured by its new toy. 

“Don’t turn your back to it.” She warned, but the creature let them leave unmolested.

Only when the door closed did her subservient act drop, and she shook herself as if removing the feeling of it. 

“.... _that_ is a dragon?” was all J said, eyebrows raised. 

“That is our dragon, yes. It was once Shou Wanabuchi, the most powerful battle-mage in the whole country.”

J looked back at the door. “Another failure, I assume.”

She laughed rather cruelly. “Not quite. It was a dream come true for him. Turned into a dragon, the most powerful, wise, and malicious creature imaginable. The others were overjoyed at the success.”

“But…”

“But he was twenty five when he changed. A grown man, for a human.”

The logic became clear, and J supplied. “...But barely out of the egg for a dragon.” 

“Exactly.” She nodded, a sardonic smile on her face. “He’s an infant, now. Little more than a weapon for the mages, fooled by whatever lies you tell him. No concept of value, either. I gave him a spoon to get the dagger, and he thought he got the better of the deal.”

“Yet he killed half a hundred in an instant.”

She paused at a junction in the corridor, mood darkening. “From what I heard, he would have done the same before the change. And enjoyed it more. That’s the kind of people the mages were. Yet that - “ She jerked her head back the way they came “- is the closest to justice his victims can hope for.”

“Yet you trust him with the treasury?”

“It was hardly my choice. He’s ensorcelled just as much as I am. But he’s not smart enough to fight the bindings. He barely recognizes they’re there. But he’d defend his ‘hoard’ from any idiots that try to get their hands on it, and the world is safer for it.”

“I did not feel anything particularly evil in that room, beyond the dragon itself.”

“That’s part of the beast’s power. Just about everything of value in there is cursed in one way or another. Good practice for the apprentices and all. But dragon magic nullifies the effects, and while in the horde anything truly malignant cannot further affect the castle.”

“An elegant solution. How much have you added to the horde, since you killed his masters?”

She froze, head snapping towards him, suddenly on guard.

“What do you mean?” A play at innocence, but J knew better.

“Do not take me for a fool, creature. It is hardly the first time a monster has gone mad and killed its masters.”

She stared at him levelly. But when he made no move to draw his weapon, she relaxed and moved on.

“I did not kill them all.”

“Just the ones left remaining after whatever experiment caused the curse of this place?” 

“Hmpf.” She glanced out from beneath her mane. “You are smarter than you look, Strix.” 

“And you have given plenty of excuses for your revenge. Perhaps you will even tell me how.”

“When you’ve finally earned it, bird-boy.”

She seemed unwilling to say more, so he was left wondering at her meaning, when they arrived at a door, and then entered another world.


	12. False Peace

The instant the Sphinx nosed through the door, J felt the change. Walking through the curse of B’Net was like walking through a miasma, the darkness clinging and cloying, liable to pull the unprepared beneath the surface to suffocate. Tomoro had fallen to it, but J himself waded through it with an almost sickening familiarity. After all, he had once fought hard through something similar, regaining just enough of himself to break free of the Zonder compulsion. This was nothing compared to their stronger hold. But it weighed on him, just as surely as it weighed on the Sphinx.

So the whiplash between the constant, low-grade struggle and the clear air of the courtyard they entered gave him an instant, pounding headache. 

Clearly, the Sphinx expected this, for she paused just beyond the door and waited until J came back to himself.

He looked around as the stinging pain faded. They were in a wide, clean courtyard with a clear view of the sky. The sands from around the castle made the blue hazy, but before the outer curse took hold, the place would have been flooded in clear, bright sunlight, and a beautiful view of the stars at night. The whole place was tiled in a smooth white stone, and there were low marble benches placed around pools with fanciful fountains. Potted trees and flowerbeds dotted the courtyard, and the walls were spotted with ivy and climbing flowers. Simple statues nestled in corners, and clear crystals hung from trees and provided sparkling glints when they were struck by the sun. 

It would have been beautiful, had anything remained alive. But even with the hot sun leaching the life from the plants and the fountains run dry, the area felt clean. Pure. And a world away from the horrors that lay just beyond the door.

He glanced at the Sphinx, only to be surprised by an equal transformation. Gone was the mangy stray whose wings he still needed to tend to. In her place was a regal creature, lion’s face ringed with a deep red mane, pelt brushed to a shine, wings elegant in red and gold. 

“Well?” She finally said. “What do you think?”

“...I don’t trust it.” 

She laughed. “Easy to say that, knowing the rest of the castle. But would you suspect anything bad were this all you saw?”

“Hmm.” He considered, probing his other-senses for more subtle hints at deception in the place. 

There were obvious magics, things any mage would instantly sense, even faded as they were now. Magic had kept the fountains running in the desert. The crystals would have glowed at night, and the plants had been kept healthy by magics written into the planters and seeped into the soil. 

None of these were more exotic than what he had seen in most castles across the human lands. The simple fact that they had faded at all proved that they were unconnected to the wider magic of the castle. 

As for the Sphinx herself, the moment she had walked through the door a subtle illusion had fallen on her, but one barely more powerful than the glamor human nobles wore. A quick glance down proved that it affected him as well, buffing his armor to a shine and subtly hiding the stains from the day’s travel. A simple enough spell, elegantly crafted, not hidden in the least but almost expected at a mage’s college. 

So, everything was as a visitor would expect. What was more surprising was that none of the darkness of the wider castle seeped into this tiny haven. The thought seemed impossible, but he could feel nothing from beyond the walls. 

He ran a hand along one, and the Sphinx spoke up to explain.

“They each have an iron core. It blocks all magic, coming from either side.” 

“Are the floors iron as well?”

“They don’t need to be.”

He raised a brow, and knelt to press a hand to the white flagstone. It was lightly warmed by the sun, but it felt warm to his magic-sense as well. He concentrated, feeling out old skills he hadn’t used in years. More than warm. It felt holy. 

He snatched his hand back. “The ground is blessed. What horrible thing did they do to force a cleric to come here?”

She snorted. “An adventurer or mage might assume that. The answer’s simpler. They just lied. Said they’d opened up an old crypt, and begged the local priests for some help.” She settled down on her paws. “An arch-priestess herself came to assist. The whole area has been blessed, and the darkness cannot intrude.”

Fearing he already knew the answer, he asked, “And where is that priestess now?”

The Sphinx considered. “I think she’s haunting two floors down? This happened long before I was sent here. I do know they used her to consecrate the dark chapel right after she finished ‘fixing’ this part of the castle.”

J was barely surprised, given what else he’d seen in B’Net. Still - “No one noticed she was missing?”

“They faked her stopping by the towns on the way out, and everyone assumed she was lost on the way back to the citadel. She wasn’t the first major figure who ‘disappeared’ on the way back from B’Net. Dangerous roads and all that. So all the major players would just portal in.”

“Let me guess - the portal opens here?” 

“Exactly. This whole wing is sanctified. Guest rooms, baths, meeting spaces...most would never think to look further.” 

“Surely some would wander farther. Mages, at the very least, are known for their curiosity.”

She looked down her muzzle at him. “Can you see the exit?”

He glanced back, and found the door hidden by the general illusion. But when he approached it, he felt the same compulsion that tried to mislead him in the desert push him away.

He was expecting it, but even then the subtlety, compared to the obvious magic of the rest of the place, made it difficult to detect when the spell took hold. 

“No one was ever suspicious?” 

She shook her head. “Only those like me - appearing human but fully ensorcelled - were used as servants here. The illusion took care of any suspicious lack of enthusiasm on our parts. And they always had someone hidden among the servants watching visitors, looking for anyone who might be too curious.”

“To dispatch them?”

“More often to entice them over to the side of darkness.” Her face was far less expressive as a lion, but he sensed regret in the slump of her ears. “Those who are curious enough to potentially ruin decorum are often those that can be tempted by unknown texts and banned magics.”

“There were no spies? No other mages trying to find the source of their magic?”

“You’ve seen the reality of this place. Any outsider wasn’t going to get far. And anyone with less than honorable intentions was likely already working with them, usually through their intermediaries throughout the kingdom. They kept that part of their business separate enough that it would be damn hard to trace it back here...but if anyone seemed interested in buying, they could always pretend that they “knew of” the answers, while never admitting the origin was here.” 

She sighed. “They ran a tight ship. B’Net has been functioning like this for at least three generations, each one worse than the last, until we ended up here.”

J looked around again, at the pretty picture and the prettier illusions. That was the problem with being too attached to the light. It was easy to forget that the darkness had no need to play by the same rules. Honor, Truth, Fairness - evil had no need for any of it. Through another lens, it was just naivety. And that naivety had let the cruel masters here operate for years without opposition.

Or perhaps there were those that knew there was something rotten in B’Net’s heart, but had benefited from the dark magic generated here, and had chosen to allow the mages to continue. Perhaps they hadn’t known the extent of it...but maybe they had, but still found the resulting weapons and magics worth a few dozen lives sacrificed each year.

If the latter was the case, J would have more cleanup to do, even after B’Net itself had been solved. 

He stood, and brushed dirt from his pants.

“Very well. One more question.”

The Sphinx cocked her head, clearly willing to answer. 

“Why don’t you stay here? Surely this place is far safer on your psyche than the rest of the castle.”

Her open expression abruptly shifted, ears back, eyes darting, and she turned away. 

“I’d prefer an ugly truth to pretty lies.” She said vehemently, but her tone suggested something more. 

His hand was already reaching out before she was done speaking, treating her just as he would Tomoro, and he realized his mistake exactly after his hand touched her side. She had been speaking into his mind so much, he had forgotten that there were things she likely would not wish to share, but which would easily bleed over in an emotional state, should he do something as idiotic as reach out. 

The memory snapped out, and he was already apologizing for intruding on her privacy when it hit. 

_White dais blue lips closed eyes_ \- This was no curated memory, ordered as a story and presented as an explanation. No. It was visceral and painful, emotional agony overwhelming him as he felt as the Sphinx had in that moment.

_Can’t move can’t cry why please MOTHER._

Amidst the whirl of emotions he sought his own order, trying to remake steps he had forged in his own mind to handle similar such horrific memories. Order to understand chaos, but not to ignore or deny the visceral emotion underneath. 

It had been agony when he had gone through it under the hands of the spiritual healers of his people, but anything less would only harm the Sphinx more when he extricated himself from her mind. He fought to find the sense amidst the pain.

_White walls, cool stone, bright sunlight._

A picture formed. The same courtyard they stood in now, filled with people wearing robes of morning. He pulled her mind from the dais in the center, and looked through her mind's eye at the attendees. 

Most he did not recognize. Others were familiar from her other memories - students and mages of the castle, chatting with serious faces and offering wine to guests. 

As if understanding what he was attempting to do, the Sphinx pushed in a different direction, and the view shifted to Gimlet, where he stood near the dais speaking to a group of high-ranking mages. 

_Hate anger guilt YOU DID THIS._

The spike of pain at the sight of Gimlet was colored in fury and regret, almost too much for a normal mind to bear, but it was dulled by repetition. The Sphinx had so many reasons to hate the master of B’Net, and the pain and anger were familiar as a leaking wound, occasionally pressed against to ensure that yes, it hurt just as much as the last time.

But it wasn’t not Gimlet she was directing him to, but the man he was speaking with. 

The Archmage Liger. The one who had sent J on this quest. Younger, perhaps by eight or so years, speaking calmly to the black hole of pain that overwrote Gimlet’s features, oblivious as any of the other guests. 

The Sphinx let time run forward, as Gimlet caught sight of her and summoned her forward with a subtle flick of his fingers that dove straight into her mind and demanded she obey. 

Liger turned to her, eyes soft and sad, reaching out to catch her hands and press them tight.

“I am so sorry, my dear.” The Sphinx remembered the warmth of his hand and eyes, perhaps the first kindness she’d experienced since being ensorcelled. “Your mother was an amazing woman and a true friend. Her death saddens us all.”

She opened her mouth to answer, but the words died in her throat, and her body turned away with no input from her mind.

She felt Liger stare at her retreating back, clearly confused at her blank eyes and wordless stare, but Gimlet was already explaining.

“It was a terrible shock to her, I’m afraid. She hasn’t spoken a word since we heard the news. A terrible tragedy, truly.” 

And he would believe it, the Sphinx knew, as Liger merely said, “Poor girl.” and, worse yet, “Thank you for caring for her in this trying time.” 

The geas forced her to walk towards the dais, back towards her mother’s body. Her supposed fellows ignored her, barely glancing in her direction, as if the mere sight of her might unravel their game and force the disgust they felt towards her onto their faces. 

There were guards by the body, but in the memory the Sphinx could not look towards them, however much she might have wished to. 

Loss crushed her heart as she stared down at her mother’s unmoving face. She had been a visionary, one of the premier alchemists in the country, and the accident that had killed her had done nothing to remove the beauty and grace in her form. Her daughter reached out and felt for a moment the warmth of her magic, as if she was still a girl, studying at her mother’s side…

That magic, still present in the corpse, was why the wake had been held here, at Castle B’Net. Her mother would be cut up for parts and her powers used to commit horrors that would leave her soul screaming. 

“There is nothing to be done.” Gimlet’s hand fell heavily on her shoulder. To an outsider his words might have seemed comforting, but to the girl who would become the Sphinx they were nothing but taunts, cutting to the bone. 

The guard on the right smiled in a way that might have seemed consoling to an outside observer, but was tinged with sardonic pleasure through the eyes of memory. 

Gimlet forced her to reach out, to run a shaking hand down her mother’s still face, to feel the frigid space where a life once thrived, as if taunting her.

For her ears only he said, “That is what happens to all who would oppose us.”

The hand at her side clenched, but he did not allow her to look away, though he did nothing to stop the tears that splashed, useless, on the stone altar. 

Tears did nothing but make the guard smile wider, while Gimlet turned away to speak to another awed student that might fall to his grasp, or become more fodder for the same machine that would tournament her mother’s soul for eternity. 

_No_. Rage ignited within her. She would not - she could not - her mother’s soul to be harmed. Damn herself if she must, but she would not allow the horrors of this place to harm someone she loved so dearly. 

Her magic was weak, near gone. Her hand shook as she called the spell. But all it took was a spark, fueled by her rage.

The corpse went up in flames. 

A moment later, Gimlet tore her away from the altar, throwing her to the ground, and dousing the flame with his own water. Then he turned on her, furious, mask cracked, hand raised to strike.

Only to be caught by the second guard.

The shine on his armor was not blinding, in the memories the Sphinx held, but J saw it so nonetheless, the instant he recognized the man. Instincts he thought long overcome began pounding, as he saw the same hair, the same helm, the same angry brown eyes. 

Guy Shishio. The man who had defeated the Cruel Phoenix.

His savior. 

_Of course you would recognize him._ For the first time since the memory began, the Sphinx seemed amused. _Who else would they send as guard for the greatest mage in the kingdom?_

Liger was already hurrying over, confusion written across his face, even as Gimlet composed himself enough to offer an excuse. 

“My apologies for my outburst, Archmage. The girl must have gone mad with grief.” He cast his eye over the remains of the corpse, appraising it for what could be saved. 

Guy had knelt, and helped the girl to her feet, expression darkening as he looked on her blank face and tear-stained cheeks. His hand stayed on hers when he turned to Gimlet.

“She may be distraught, but that does not mean she is wrong.”

“Excuse me? She - “

Guy spoke on, as if one of the most powerful men in the land was nothing more than a bother. 

“Madam was a devout follower of the Sun in all her aspects. I cannot think of a more fitting burial than to allow the body to be consumed in flame.” 

He glanced towards the girl who would become the Sphinx and, seeing that she was in no state to continue, turned to the altar. 

With the watching eyes of a dozen mages of light, Gimlet could do nothing while the Paladin spoke the words of the Sun prayer, and called down _Her_ blessing. 

Not a speck of ash was left of the corpse, and the girl felt her tears welling up in relief. Whatever punishment she suffered, it would be worth it to know her mother’s soul would be safe. 

The memory faded, and reality slowly returned, but with it came the lingering knowledge of what happened after.

Her punishment had been the loss of her Name; ripped out of her by an archdemon, severing any memory of her existence from all but those of the strongest will. After that, being beaten near to death had been comparatively painless. Gimlet had watched with satisfaction, then banished her to the deepest kitchen, where she had been forgotten about. Worked to the bone, ensorcelled under even more compulsions, she had only seen the upper floors when they dragged her out to drain the last remnants of her magic. 

“So you could say this place was the start of it all.” she said, shaking her head free of the memories.

At least she seemed embarrassed that she had lost control enough to pull another into her nightmare. 

J scratched the back of his neck. “I see why you would not wish to stay here.”

She looked down and scuffed the sand with a paw. Even here, in the ‘pure’ region, the sand found its way into everything. 

Then they both spoke at once, the same word over another’s voice.

“I’m sorry for - “   
“I shouldn’t have - .” 

She flushed, and turned away, allowing him to speak.

“I should not have intruded into your mind.” He said.

“Well, I shouldn’t have dragged you in. I...I was better trained than that.”

This time, he caught himself before reaching out. All the instincts that he had gained, laboriously, over the last four years to care for Tomoro were backfiring and making him want to comfort the Sphinx the same way he would his bond-mate. 

Instead, he said, “No one should be expected to deal with that alone.” 

She barked a laugh. “Well, I guess I’m lucky to have you then, huh?” 

\---------------------------------------------

J brooded as he followed the Sphinx back to the “safe” areas of the castle, then continued to brood as he walked the two leagues to the campsite. He even continued to brood until Tomoro sat on him and demanded an update on what had happened over the day. 

Parsing it all into a summary proved impossible, and the griffin kept asking questions that J regretted not asking himself, which only made him brood more. 

“And how do you take someone’s name? It’s just a word!” Tomoro continued, drawing him out of his thoughts, for he actually knew the answer.

“A name is not just a word. It begins as one, but it becomes something much more.”

How would the Sphinx have explained it? Some clever metaphor, surely. But he was left with a vague memory and struggled to explain.

“It becomes the focal point of one’s identity. Something not physical, but more than spirit, more than magic. When you meet a new person, it is your name which is the first introduction. When people remember you, their memory is tied to that name. To change it is near impossible, close to creating a whole new self, and undertaken only after deep thought.”

The griffin fluffed his feathers, still considering. “So...it’s like a magical title?” 

“One completely unique to the individual, yes.”

“But if that one word is at the core of an identity, how could you steal it?”

J thought back to the Sphinx, a creature whose former life had no connection to the work she did now, tied to the castle in body and soul, all memories of the time before meaningless to her single-minded resistance.

“It is powerful magic. When clerics give their names up to their gods, it is not uncommon for the gods themselves to answer, such is the sacrifice. To do so without consent would require a deal with darkness - and I am sure the Mages of B’Net were well compensated by their dark patrons for the gift.” 

Tomoro shivered. 

“But they made a mistake, when they did not give her a new name.” The thought had just occurred to him, but it made a surprising amount of sense, given what he had seen of the Sphinx, both around the castle and in her memories. 

“How so?”

“It allowed her to make her own identity, after her old one was taken. Hidden behind a veneer of servitude, but constant in its resistance; with that she could keep her sanity in such a place.”

Tomoro cocked his head. “Given that, it’s no wonder she became a Sphinx, then.”

J glanced up at his friend, confused. 

The bird explained, “Well, she’s the riddle, isn’t she? A puzzle of words that needs solved.” Then he smiled, eyes crinkling at the edges with avian pride. “But you’re near to solving it, aren’t you? You almost know her name.”


	13. Gate

J thought of the wider world as he headed out the next afternoon, having stopped by the tavern to pick up supplies and update the Mages’ College. No new information from them; it seemed the war was still straining their resources and they had no one to spare for assistance.

He ground his teeth, as he always did when the subject of troop shortages crossed his mind. He should be on the battlefield, fighting alongside the humans, pushing back the Primevals, just as he had once fought the Zonders. But, despite his recovery in the two years between the humans’ victory over the Zonders and the appearance of the Primevals, he had been resolutely turned away. The reason had been obvious - they all thought he might turn to the darkness again. 

No matter how many minor monsters he defeated, no matter how many villages he saved, no matter how many caravans he protected, the ‘Cursed Phoenix’ would not disappear from their minds. It was just as much his name as “J” was, even if he had thrown off the shackles and worked hard to recover his sense of identity. 

At least his people were safe. While the Zonders had decimated the northern wilds, the Strix were recovering, as they always had. But their military force was gone, and the Primevals seemed to think their lands would fall easily once the humans were dealt with. It was foolish logic, assuming that warriors alone were capable of defending land and family, but any time the monsters gave was time spent preparing their counter attack.

Not that he had been included in that, either. But unlike with the humans, it was his own shame and fear that had him avoiding his land and his people. It hurt too much to return, to see the decimation with his own eyes, and know that no small part of it had been from his hand. 

The Gimlet in the Sphinx’s memory was wrong; his people had welcomed him back, perhaps believing the same thing that the Sphinx had - that the White Griffin had chosen their end - and thus no one resented him for the loss of their symbol. Or perhaps it was the fact that an Asimir child; the same, in fact, that he had saved in the fall of the Red City; had been revealed to be the scion of the gods sent to the physical realm to care for the spiritual needs of his people. Perhaps seeing that child, Kaido, had comforted the White Griffin in its last moments, knowing that its place would be filled. 

So his people could face the future with courage, but J himself had no such certainty. An exile of his own choice, the corruption in his heart had been healed, but his chance for revenge had been stolen and his once iron-clad faith shattered.

So he wandered, and he ended here, in front of a castle of monsters, forbidden from doing the one thing that he had been trained for, a punishment only the gods could have imagined. 

And yet...when the Sphinx saw him, she smiled, and he felt the soul of a kindred spirit reach out to him. Dusty pelt and atrocious wings, hiding a soul seeped in pain and suspicion, yet when he called out, she still smiled, cautious and unsure, but willing to take a chance. 

Perhaps there was a lesson in that.

\----------------------------------------------------- 

The Sphinx tried to relax under J’s ministrations, but it was still strange to feel another’s touch. In some ways, his easy efficiency, born from years of doing the same to his beast, was a blessing. Had she been given something so extreme as affection, she would not have been able to handle it. But the former soldier got to work correcting her wings with the same careful attention as he had when brushing out her coat, and it felt as though years of dirt and decay were brushed away with every smoothed feather and corrected primary. 

And while he worked, she sketched out further floors and their inhabitants, the litany of monsters, ghosts and others becoming an almost sing-song drone.

It shouldn’t have surprised her when he felt his hands slowing. She spoke on, concentrating on forcing her paws to trace out the map in the sand, forelimb shaking with the effort to control a body that was not meant for precise movements. 

She nearly yelped when she felt something heavy hit her side, the unexpected action causing her wings to flare, slipping the left out of unresisting hands.

A quick glance over her shoulder showed the fearsome Soldato slumped against her side, angular features softened in sleep, feathery hair pressed against his face as he nodded into her side. 

She was touched. The mighty Soldato, comfortable enough in her presence to relax.

At the same time, the instincts that had served to save the remaining servants reminded her that it was not safe for anyone to sleep in the castle. The man must have been running himself hard, caring to both the strange needs of the castle and whatever other heroism he got up to during the night. 

But how to wake him? She had no interest in being too nice - making the bird-man squawk was just too amusing, for all that she appreciated his help. 

The shift was easy enough. All she had to do was look for the core of frustration and anger within herself, and apply it to how much she hated her form. Paws that could not open doors. Claws that shook when she wrote. Fur and feathers that refused to behave, and wings and a tail that always seemed to be in the way and never did what she asked. 

She only had to think of it for a few moments, before she was able to turn and press a cold, wet lion’s nose onto the Soldato’s ear. 

\-------------------------------

He woke with a yelp at the sudden sensation, flinging himself away from the Sphinx, hand flying to his sword, whirling to find the source of the attack. 

Instead, he saw the Sphinx collapse into laughter that was so like Tomoro’s they could have been twins. 

He wiped the damp from his ear and glared, which only made her laugh harder. 

“Your face!” She chortled, flapping wings kicking up dust and displaying just how much improvement a few days of food and a good rub-down had done her. 

“Very funny.” He hissed back, but couldn’t find it in him to be too angry. He was the one who had nodded off in an evil-infested dark castle. His ancestors must be spinning on their clouds. 

She stuck her tongue out at him, still laughing, and stood. 

“You should be heading back to your beast. I’m sure he’s begun to worry about you.”

J rolled his eyes, but began to pack up his equipment anyways. “Tomoro can tell I am fine. Even through the castle’s barrier, he could tell if I was ever in mortal danger.” But his beast would, rightly, expect him to act sensible. Which meant not remaining in an evil castle if he was incapable of remaining vigilant. 

The Sphinx shook herself, and J was pleased to see both feathers and fur settling correctly as she flexed and turned. “If he can tell when you are in danger, why didn’t he come when I attacked you?”

“I left before I was in true peril.” He glanced up from his pack. “You saw to that.” 

The Sphinx stilled. She always did, when approached by a truth she was not yet willing to admit. 

“Were it not for you, all of the other adventurers would have died.” He continued. 

“The Warlock did anyways.” She said, still not meeting his eyes. 

“He was a fool. Your rules could not have been more clear.”

She huffed. “What does that make you, then?” 

He gave her a wry smile. “I stand by my words.” 

That she laughed at, chuckling as she followed him to the gate.

Then - 

“Tomorrow I am going into the dungeons. You may come with me, if you wish.”


	14. Color

The next day he arrived early, with his sword back on his hip and wearing the light, leather armor his people favored for rugged terrain. 

The Sphinx took one look at him and - rather than speaking out against the sword - simply nodded. She herself had adornment; the key the dragon had given them hung around her neck, the opulent embroidery at odds with both the dull iron and the lanky beast. 

“This will be more dangerous than last time.” She said.

J raised a brow. “More dangerous than the wraiths?”

“Mmm.”

“And the dragon.”

“Mmm.”

“And the 57 other kinds of monsters you’ve described on the upper levels?”

“Yes.” She explained, “There are things in the dungeons that even I don’t know the name of. Experiments on the cutting edge of Dark magic.”

She paused, and looked up at him with a grim expression.

“If you do not follow my lead you will die. If you do not trust me, fully, you will die. If you have any doubt at all, you should leave now.”

He matched her serious expression with one of his own. From anyone else, he would have scoffed and guessed that they were overstating the danger to frighten him.

But the Sphinx was deadly serious, and the proof was in the dangers she had already shown him. 

He rested a hand on his sword...and the other on her shoulder, right above the wings he had so meticulously repaired over the last week. 

“I will follow. Show me the worst of this place.” 

\------------------------------------ 

In the beginning, their trip down was much the same as the trip to the treasury. She took them through the undercroft first, the ghosts and beasts that haunted those halls simpler to deal with and easier to avoid. Most had jobs, and none had been given enough power to do any serious damage. It wasn’t as if there was much that needed protecting in the linen closets and pantries. 

“Anything with a mind I tried to get out.” She said, as she led him through the lowest kitchen. The one she had been banished to after angering Gimlet. 

Time had not been kind to the place, turning everything remotely edible into the ghostly white dust that cascaded from barrels and cabinets. But there was no doubt it had been little better before; the dust could not scrub the stains from the hearth or the splatters from the wall. There were signs of the Sphinx’s temper as well. She did not point out the carnage of shattered plates in the sinks and the claw marks on the broken table, but J noticed it nonetheless.

“But there were others like me, so ensconced that they could do nothing but follow their orders but physical enough to need food. The kitchen staff here were like that. They were the hardest to save.” 

J ran a hand along one of the basins, noting blood stains that appeared far older than the broken dishes. “What did you do with them?”

“The upper kitchens have a stasis spell in one of the pantries. I locked them in after I knew no one was coming to help.”

“That seems...dangerous.”

“More so than answering dinner bells accidentally rung by escaped monsters?” 

“....point.” 

They left the kitchen behind, and J tried to imagine the beast beside him scraping pots as a scullery-girl. The image hardly fit, until he recalled the memory of the banked furry she had held so closely, even as she bowed to the man who killed her mother. 

It said little to his own redemption that he hoped, quietly, that the stasis spell pained the creatures caught in it. 

\-----------------------------------------

After the kitchens came the cellars, and it was back to the now-familiar walk with J a few paces behind the Sphinx, matching her pace and avoiding walls and random flagstones. It was dark enough that J never saw the beasts that they avoided, but he had the sense of great, hulking size and the sound of scales and paws on stone, the faintly glowing sand doing little to reveal the beasts that disturbed it. 

The shift from the Undercroft to the dungeons was not as obvious as he would have thought. Just another doorway, hardly different than the others they had already passed through. No increase in malignant energy, no sudden attack. 

But this one she paused at, looking to the eye above, fitted to the stone and etched out in broken shards of tile and blue gems.

"Your sons are safe, Lady. They honor their master with their work."

The door was already open, the arch having once held some kind of mechanical device which now seemed rusted open. But, as with the rooms above, there was an ease of tension with the Sphinx's words.

The eye closed, gem-stone hidden beneath a mechanical hatch, and the Sphinx moved on.

She caught him looking back a moment later and explained, "She was the head housekeeper, once. One of the first to be turned, fifty years ago. Her sons guard the cellars as huge wolf-beasts. The mages would force her open with spells, but news of her children does just as well.”

"Who broke the doors?"

"The mages. When they tried to get out."

Something in her tone forbade him from asking further. But he was surprised to see no bloodstains on the floors. Though there were scratches, deep in the wooden molding and scoured into the stone floor. But they were layered, some ancient, some newer. Perhaps it was not unusual for creatures to be dragged, protesting, into the depths. 

The last of the natural light had faded as they worked their way deeper into the castle, the Undercroft lit with light from windows high in the ceiling, fading into a grey twilight as they moved further inward. Now the lights switched to glowing mushrooms that had been set in wall-sconces, proving that they had been set intentionally, though some had out-grown their bounds in the months since the castle fell to the sands. 

“Why not use mage-lights?” J asked, as they started down a stairway. 

“Too much experimental magic. No one wants to lose their light just because a spell backfired. But there are places best navigated by darkness, lower down. It's good that you didn’t bring a torch.” 

Then she told him to jump the next two steps, and duck under a suspicious set of carved sconces, and they moved on. 

\----

Two levels down the staircase ended in a proper dungeon, cells lining each wall, similar to any other human castle J had seen. It was only as they passed on that he realized that the cells were not uniform in size, gradually growing larger as the floor sloped down and the oppressive darkness that blanked the upper castle seemed to take physical form and hide the cells from sight.

The darkness didn’t hide the sounds, however. The slide of wet flesh against stone, the creak of bone, the sizzle of acid as it dripped. The scent of rot and decay hung heavy, and J tried not to consider the cleansing effects of the sand, and what that meant for the creatures who were rotting away, but his mind too easily answered. Still living. No matter how foul the scent or painful the sound, the creatures still survived, else they would have decayed to sand. 

Occasionally there was a whimper, or what almost sounded like words. More often there were growls and occasionally the sound of something slamming against bars. 

Through it all, the Sphinx walked, paws padding silently across the stone floor, occasionally glancing to make sure J was following. 

“I’ve done what I can for them. But I only allow myself to come down here once a month. Else…” 

The muscle beneath J’s hand was tense, and she stared resolutely forward, even as another cry went out. 

“Could you end their pain?” He asked, as something reached past the bars of a cage, not quite a tentacle, not quite a hand, but with long nails that looked almost human. 

“If you mean, could I kill them? Perhaps. But it would just replace this pain with another. All of us are promised to demons or devils. Die, and we become their playthings in the next life. Here…”

She stepped closer to a cage, and did something that allowed the fog to lift, for just a moment. 

The creature inside was a tall, willowy thing. Darkness wrapped around long, rank hair that rustled with the sound of dry leaves. Emancipated flesh was more bark than bone and the face looked carved in an expression of sorrow. 

Yet it moved, rocking back and forth, lifeless eyes staring at nothing. The only shock of color was a bag, dwarfed by skeletal hands as large as the Sphinx’s wings, red silk captured in a careful, loving cage. 

“I don’t know who she was, before. But she was a child, I think. I wrapped her doll in silk, so it would not decay. She cries when she cannot see it.”

The Sphinx stepped back, and the fog descended again.

“And the others?”

“Some I was able to put to sleep. Others...their minds are gone, but they can still feel. Softness, a sweet sound, cool water...I’ve done what I can.” She looked back at him, as if in challenge. “I know it is not enough. But it is all I can do.” 

He had nothing to say to that. So he just followed her on, past a room that would have been a torture chamber in any other castle, but here was filled with casks and broken vials, odd lettering on the walls and floors. A black goo burbled in the corner. Small cages lined the wall, hinges broken, and there were the leather remains of books. Chalk crunched beneath his boots as he traveled through it. 

There was still blood on the floor, though. And gouges on the tables and stonework. Many were in places no human could reach, made with hands with too many fingers...or not enough. 

So still a torture chamber. Just one that peddled more than simple physical pain. 

The worst of the damage led onward, to a hall with a sloping floor and rails upon the ground. Here there did not seem to be much to avoid, just a word spoken to the doorway and the avoidance of any stones with runes carved on them. 

The place was well lit, compared to the earlier dungeon. The mushrooms seemed better able to push back the darkness, letting it pool only in corners and the occasional doorways jutting off from the main hall, all of which the Sphinx walked passed. More of the same cells, J suspected. Many had metal signs near the doors, corroded to illegibility, magics having long since faded. Once they must have described the rooms beyond. Now only the Sphinx could decipher them. 

She led him deeper, the hall zig-zagging in a pattern J instinctively recognized as a kind of switch-back. They passed what must have been an elevator shaft, the repeating doors recognizable even if little else in the place was, but J did not ask if the mechanism still worked. He wouldn’t have trusted it, given the decay seen in the rest of the castle. Nor would he like to think of what had powered it, should it easily still function. Either way, the Sphinx clearly found the corridor safer.

They were a good three floors beneath the surface when she paused the first time. Before them, the corridor looked no different, but her tail lashed once before she spoke.

“We’re about to pass the first of the dark floors. Hold onto my mane, and keep moving.” 

He did as he was told, though he could see nothing strange, beyond another open corridor branching off to the right. 

But when they passed the opening, darkness descended. Instant, chilling darkness, of the kind only found in the deepest caves, where light was only a distant memory. 

The Sphinx hissed when his hand clenched on her wing, and he came back to himself and relaxed. Magical darkness was not a foreign concept to him. But he had never experienced one that brought the cold as well, nor one that took his footsteps and echoed them as if he was wandering through a chasm, rather than a corridor only a few wingspans wide. 

“This is the easiest.” The Sphinx said, her voice reduced to a distant whisper, but the darkness unable to steal the lecture from her voice. “There is deeper darkness further on.”

“Deeper?” 

“We’re almost through. Close your eyes - “ The light flickered on as fast as it left, and J was grateful for the warning, as it protected him from being blinded. “- anyways, further down there are halls that mimic other planes. With the enchantments fading they...leak.”

"...leak?"

"Mmm. More than just darkness bleeds over. Emotions, memories, things like that."

The rail beneath their feet began to curve, indicating another switchback, and he followed as she avoided a set of short stairs on the inner curve. He wasn't sure of the pattern she used on which stairs to avoid, which to use, but the logic seemed clear to her, even as he saw no physical differences between this and the half dozen they had already used.

"How deep does this go?"

"Twelve floors down. Then we hit the caverns."

He glanced to the side, down a side hall that was better lit than most. Another room for experiments, opening directly on to a hall with cells, these with glass rather than bars. Colors flashed, and he was reminded of the odd prism on the higher floor.

"What was this, before?"

She attempted a shrug. "Catacombs, I think. The castle is ancient, older than half the villages hereabouts. I suspect the ghouls were what brought the first dark mage here. And when they exhausted the bodies they already had...well, you've seen the result."

He shook his head, his grimace matching hers. 

"How much longer will this place last, without the mages to refresh the magic?" He asked as they turned again, this time taking the short stairs and avoiding the slope.

She paused, tail sweeping back and forth.

"The enchantment on this place keeps most of the monsters alive. Their suffering sustains it, and in turn it keeps them functioning. It’s how the plants keep growing without sun, and the fish still breath without water. And even how I kept moving despite not eating for six months.”

“...you were barely functional when you attacked me.”

She huffed a laugh. “Well, of course. The magic doesn’t keep us _healthy_. The pain only serves the magic more.” 

How, he wanted to ask, but they had come to another door with a dangerous overflow, this time of greenery that exhaled a deadly perfume when disturbed, and required both to hold their breath as they passed over the flowering carpet. 

Then it was on through a hall with grasping shadows, which were only pushed back with a white-blue light the Sphinx kept at the upper bend of the corridor and showed J how to use it to clear the path. 

And on, each turn in the path leading to a new section of hall with its own dangers. Slowly J began to recognize a pattern, with each full floor mapping to a metaphysical plane. Fire, water, earth, air...along with the spiritual ones of chaos and order, good and evil, and then a mixture of each. 

Most of the monsters remained contained, but the feeling of each floor bleed out. Not always pure darkness, the other planes attacked emotions as well, or called upon memories better left forgotten. The dark earth floor felt like wading through mud, the air itself dragging him backwards. The fire floors stank of sulfur and heated the metal of his sword to near burning. The pure light floor was blinding, holiness cutting him to the core and leaving him with an ache that made him feel unworthy. If he had ever wondered how purity could be used for the side of evil, the latter showed him. There was nothing evil in the light itself but the hollowness it left behind was an aching wound. 

That floor seemed to harm the Sphinx the most out of all of them, as of all the floors they traveled through, that was the only one to cause her to pause after, panting hard as if she had run past it, rather than walking carefully over the irregular stones. He didn’t ask what she remembered when the light passed over her. The reminder of his own sins was sure to give him nightmares enough. 

In some ways, the darkness of despair was easier to walk through, for that was a familiar pain, one that he had lived four years of his life inside, and had wrestled himself from once before. But he wouldn’t envy any later adventurer who tried to fight their way through the castle, for if they could walk through the light unscathed, they would certainly have struggled at the dark. To survive here, one would need to have experienced both the best and the worst the world had to offer.

_This place is a test._

The words came to him in Tomoro’s lilting tones, though the beast himself could not breach the castle’s miasma. Still, the connection they shared often reminded him of the obvious in Tomoro’s voice, just as the beast in turn complained of hearing the voice of restraint in J’s own. 

But J did not have a chance of considering further, because the Sphinx paused at the top of another low stair and said, “Past this, the caves start. This one is the worst. Hold tight, and keep moving.”

He followed, assuming that it would be another cruel darkness and steeling himself for the same.

He did not expect the opposite. 

Unlike the earlier floors, the plane did not set upon them quickly. Instead, the colors seeped up from the floor as they walked on, bringing with them scents of perfume and rain. The light grew with each step, but it still came as a surprise when he realized he no longer could see before him; blinding, but not painful, the light simply overwhelmed the senses with a swirl of color, patterns flickering, moments of familiar memories echoing just out of sight. 

Each step on, and the ache of the miasma faded, replaced with a lightness he could not describe, and couldn’t remember feeling except, perhaps, as a very small child. Beneath his feet the stones melted to cool grass, while the rough fur beneath his hand grew silky and soft, as if his hand were on that of a great white beast, rather than a small, weak Sphinx. 

It wasn’t paradise as he had ever heard it described. But every step his heart beat lighter, his burdens eased, and the thought that he could stay grew. Stay, and put his pains behind him. Stay, and ignore his guilt and sorrow. Stay, and let the last kind memories overwhelm him. Stay, and let the outer world drive itself to destruction. Stay, and let the world go hang.

The pain, when it came, barely cut through the fog. A sensation, just like any other, which his mind observed from afar, familiar and easy. He moved forward only because it seemed just as simple as remaining in place, and in the same moment he dimly realized he had stopped moving. 

There was a reason he was supposed to keep moving. What had it been? 

His mind snapped back into focus, and he shook his head to clear whatever madness had overcome him. Luckily, the colors cleared a moment later and the real world rushed back. His hand throbbed where the Sphinx had bit him to drag him forward, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be angry. The pain was grounding. Real. Enough to push him forward, out of the passageway onto the first level ground they’d encountered since beginning their trek downward. 

“What…” He was panting hard, even as he massaged the feeling back into his hand. 

“Elysium.” The Sphinx explained. “The plane of chaotic good.” 

He wiped his brow, surprised to find himself sweating hard. “Why...why would they have something so...kind in a place like this?”

She cocked her head, and he sensed the sneer even before he glanced at her face. “For the same reason that I could walk through there and keep my senses.” 

His brow knotted, then he parsed her logic. “...despair. That is what so much of their magic is built on.” He paused, then asked. “How often did they force you in there?” 

Her tail lashed. “Enough. It was Gimlet’s favorite game. A few minutes in there, remembering home and family and freedom...then on to cleaning whatever their new great success was.” She looked away. “I think they knew I saw my mother in there. They usually made me take care of families after. Mothers forced to eat their children, that kind of thing. I doubt anyone else could walk through, though. You had the ‘right’ reaction.”

“No.” He shook his head. “A lie is a lie. No matter how tempting it is. I will not fall for it again.” 

She looked at him, head cocked to the side, surprise on her face. “...no, you won’t, will you?


	15. Array

After the dungeons the caverns were hardly an obstacle. The route was more or less straight, following pre-existing tunnels where it could, then boring through stone when the builders knew there was another chamber nearby. The monsters were all as J could have expected. A few ghosts that seemed to avoid the Sphinx as she steered herself and J around their graves. Some grasping vines and a few poisonous fungi. Darkness, of the simple kind that ate light but nothing more. 

Apparently, if a traveler had reached this far, the mages must have already taken them into their confidence. Or, as the bloodstains and scratches on the cave floor suggested, they were already too far gone to be a threat. 

The Sphinx did not speak of the creatures they avoided, but J noticed that she made no attempt to calm them or lessen their pain. She instructed him to push through a stand of inky black hands that pulled and tugged with impotent desperation. Similarly, when she instructed him to remove his boots - completely unnecessary, given his own skills when it came to moving silently - she did not suggest he avoid damaging the creature they walked around, merely telling him that his silence was enough. 

“Have you already done all you can for these creatures?” He asked, after they avoided something unseen in a large cavern and passed on into the safety of a smaller tunnel. 

She was silent for a moment, then said “I have done all I care to.” and the glance she sent behind them lacked any of the compassion she held for the creatures of the upper floors. 

The explanation came a chamber later, when they passed a wall that breathed, and a mouth appeared and spoke. 

With more sanity than any other creature J had yet seen in the castle, it begged.

“Sphinx. You come again? Release me. I was not the one that tormented you.” 

J opened his mouth to ask, but the Sphinx hurriedly shook her head, and he realized the wall had no eyes, and was only guessing at who passed beside it. 

“Girl? Girl please. Kill me, and I will reward you in the Abyss. End my suffering, and I will see that you come to me when you fall.”

She walked on, ignoring its words, even as it swore at her, shouts echoing behind them.

“You will fail again! They will all suffer, and only I hold the key to end it all! You will beg me, girl! If not today, then the next time you walk these halls! You will - “ 

The creature, whatever it had been, cut off when they passed the next archway.

“...demon?” he asked.

“Devil.” She said. “Bound to its master. You will understand when we reach the Heart.” 

J’s brow creased. “The...heart?”

“Of the castle. We’re almost there.” 

\----------------------------- 

Their destination was a mere two chambers on. Past the devil, there was a cavern that had been worked more than the rest, with cabinets along the far wall, and sigils carved into the flattened floor. Here the runes glowed, providing the only light other than faint glow from the ever present dust. There were chairs at the edges of the room, broken like every other piece of furniture in the caverns, and torn wall hangings.

The space would have been pleasant, at least for the sort that enjoyed the tortures of the dungeons above. It reminded J of an antechamber.

And then…

The Sphinx had been right. So much of this place made sense when one saw its heart. 

\--------------------------------------

The chamber was huge, with a high, vaulted ceiling and a floor that sloped like an amphitheater to a wide flat space ringed with a knee high wall. Over the wall, all the way to the chamber’s sides, were drifts upon drifts of the white sand, making the space glow with a pale, sickly white. At the center was a magical array, humming with malevolent energies, the glyphs still glowing faintly red. 

But that was not what drew the eye. No, instead it was the central pillar, a single massive stalactite that dripped from the ceiling like wax upon a candle. The whole chamber, and in turn every floor and room above it, fed into this single pillar. 

And upon it was a map. Conical, barely visible at the edges, but undoubtedly the kingdom of humans, its crags and rivers reflected in gouges and peaks in the stone, colored in faded greens and browns shading to greys the further from the central point the eye traveled. The map stretched and tugged, dragging the surrounding environs down, down to the center of the room, towards the very tip of the stalactite, hanging in the air a bare handspan above J’s own height.

And at that tip, at the apex of the map, the point at which the castle represented...there was a device. 

Simple in its design, it looked like nothing more than an hourglass dangling from the stone, the heart of the castle caught in the upper bulb and shown in vibrant detail, the surrounding areas etched out in deep greens and rich ocher, moving from stone…

To sand. 

Realization dawned. 

Stone to sand. 

The map was not a reflection of the real world. Through magic, it was the real. And, inch by inch, it was being fed into this device, and being turned to sand.

Sand that, in turn, cascaded from the shattered lower bulb, stripped of its purpose, the ‘order’ of the map reduced to lifeless dust. 

As he watched, shocked, the map moved, dripping down, down to the neck of the glass, slipping through the device as easy as, well, sand through an hourglass. 

He watched as another few inches of the real world were fed into the device while, surely, outside another span was added to the desert. 

Faster now, his eyes flickered to the array on the floor, where the single magic still active in the castle pulsed, powering the device, but also pulling from it, siphoning off power elsewhere. And, given the slow slip of the map, more and more energy would be generated every moment, as a larger and larger area around the castle was eaten by the sands. 

He shivered, horrified the sheer scale of the destruction planned. It had simply sat there, powering the castle and whatever master held the keys to the array, hidden by banality until he had stumbled upon it almost by accident. 

Had Liger not wished to find his ward, would anyone have noticed, until it was far, far too late? 

He turned, hand gripped on the pommel of his sword, knowing what he had to do. 

If the Sphinx stood in his way, he would strike her down. 

But for the first time in four years, his heart sunk at the thought of killing a monster.

Perhaps that was her game. Why she had tolerated him so long. So he would allow this madness to continue, for the sake of her friends. For her.

He was stronger than that.

It didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt. 

He wet his lips. 

“The array must be destroyed.”  
“Please help me destroy it.” 

They both said at once. 

He stuttered to a stop, his shocked look mirrored in her own. Her tail lashed, her eyes wide yet determined, and at the back of his mind he felt the thrum of her conviction. 

He recovered first. “You...you want to destroy it?”

She nodded. “I’ve tried to do it alone, but I can’t. It’s too high up, and my hands...I can’t get a grip on it. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but it's no use. I need your help.”

“It might destroy the castle.” He said, noticing for the first time the gouges in the stone and the tumbled drifts of sand, as if something had climbed to the device and then been throw, over and over again, with no success. 

She stared at him. “It might destroy the _world_.” Then she looked away. “I’ve tried to do my best by all the servants here, but all our souls...that can’t compare to the entire world falling to darkness. But…” 

She looked up again. “It might destroy you. And if worst come to worst, it might even revert you back to the Cruel Phoenix. If...if you’d rather take your payment and go, I won’t stop you. I just ask that, now you know, you tell the mages what is happening here. Maybe that would be enough for them to do something about this.”

“No.”

She jerked, wings flaring. “No?”

“No. I will not walk away from this. If you are willing to sacrifice everyone you love, who am I to stand aside? I will help you.” He looked towards the device, and unsheathed his sword. “Tell me what to do.”

\---------

It was both easier and harder than he expected. 

Easier, because the physical act was simply standing upon the Sphinx’s shoulders and bashing at the device until it broke. 

Harder, because each hit snapped back with the energies of the floors above. 

He had thought the trip down had been some kind of test. Now, slamming his sword into the cracks between the stone, light and dark in equal measures burning his hands, he realized that it had been practice. 

The device did not wish to be destroyed. Power flared at each hit, illuminating the room in sickening greens and freezing whites, flashing in colors of fear and pain and all too tempting oblivion. 

But he kept at it, his own wings flaring to provide balance and press back against the gale. The Sphinx’s presence beneath him was solid, consistent, and her words acted as warning against the next flare. 

“Keep going.” She hissed, her own wings pressed against his calves to keep him steady, her words gritted out as the sand beneath her shifted and tried to unseat them. 

J pried one of the stone supports away from the glass, sword groaning at the abuse, frigid darkness lapping at his fingers. 

“Almost...there…”

“Careful. Elysium should be next.” She called out, just in time for him to steel himself. 

The light snapped out as he brought the pommel down upon the glass, catching him mid-strike and attempting to seep away all his momentum. But with the Sphinx’s warning, he anticipated the lie, and forced his arm to keep its arc.

Glass cracked, and the feeling of euphoria stopped as soon as it had come.

“One more.” The Sphinx called out. “Should be all it should take…”

He nodded, trusting she could feel his movement, and brought his hand down one last time.

Glass shattered.

Silence descended. 

Then _roared_.

The Sphinx was moving before he could react, as the world shifted beneath their feet and the array began to scream. J was flung to the ground, as the first pulse of darkness so deep it left false light flashing in his eyes. He screamed as it tore through him, searing pain left in its wake. 

How the Sphinx could still move was a mystery, but she shoved a shoulder against him and pushed them both away, as the roar only grew and the room began to shake. Eyes still streaming, he vaguely saw the array throwing up glyphs while there was something happening at the neck of the device, white and dark swirling in a whirlwind at its core. 

“Close your eyes!” She screamed. 

He didn’t have time. He saw her jump, wings flared, heavy body shielding him, as there was an implosion behind her, and then an explosion of blinding white. 

For a moment, he saw the silhouette of a girl, hair in a tangled mane around her, arms outstretched, determination in her eyes. Then the Sphinx hit him, wings outstretched to hide the blinding light, and it was gone, replaced with pain and noise and the feeling of his soul ripping apart. 

And then the sky fell down.


End file.
